Not many bands succeed in permanently increasing their abilities during their musical career, and in so doing manage to present another masterpiece to their growing fan community in which this development can be heard or even felt in every single note. Right on time for their ten year anniversary, "Apathology" is the band's seventh release. And what an album that is...
"Apathology" – another self created wordplay meaning the 'science of apathy' - is an at times a very unusual concept album. Made for the darker days of the waning year, it leads the listener into an almost tangible but still surreal and sometimes unsettling world of nearly oppressive beauty. You can hear the ten months of studio work in every note - quite an exceptionally long time to spend recording, although not particularly so for SCREAM SILENCE. They celebrate an almost matchless dense, dreary atmosphere with an until now scarcely-heard complexity and with foremost variety. Every single song is unique and doesn't resemble any of the others not even the least. The fragile guitar lines, especially at the slower pieces like "Downfallen" and the depressive "The Antagonist" seem to dance with Fieting's keyboard and string arrangements. Almost playfully they develop into hammering walls of sound when SCREAM SILENCE interpret in their own typical way the fastest song in band history "Their Bleakest Sun", the catchy "Killing Essay" and the potential hit "Counterfeit". With unusual songs like the psychotic opener "The Faint", the oppressive "Apathy", the exceedingly dreary "Athanasia" or the inimitable hymn "This Is What We Left Behind" the band prove their impressive musical bandwidth that only repeated listening fully reveals.
The closing nine-minute "Euphoria" describes in sheer unbelievable lethargy the phenomenal very last moment of life. SCREAM SILENCE have arrived without doubt at their creative zenith and impressively show on "Apathology" how modern dark rock music can sound... and should sound: without exaggerated pathos, but instead with the feeling for the perfect song full of authenticity.
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