UMUR
"The Great Bear" is the 3rd full-length studio album by US, Denver, Colorado based heavy metal/thrash metal act Silencer. The album was released through Vanity Music Group in September 2012. "The Great Bear" is a concept album evolving around a fictional take on the US versus Soviet space race of the 1950’s/1960s.
Musically the band have changed quite a bit since their last album and instead of beating our heads with aggressive thrash and distorted harsh vocals, Silencer have chosen to look deep in the bag of inspiration and have come up with something that sounds like a mix of vintage Metallica (the voice of lead vocalist Chad Armstrong bears a slight similarity to the voice of James Hetfield), (contemporary) Mastodon/Baroness and a load of traditional heavy metal elements. There´s even an obvious nod towards Pink Floyd in the short instrumental "Star City Pt. II". Tracks like "Star City Pt. I" and "Great Bear" stand out, but the album deserves to be listened to as a whole. It´s only then the listener will get the full conceptual experience of the album, and I dare say that shorter instrumentals like "Sacred War" and the above mentioned "Star City Pt. II", are just as important to the atmosphere of the album as the longer "regular" heavy metal tracks.
The sound production is a slight weakness to my ears. It´s not bad sounding or distracting but the drums sound a bit thin and a bit more power could have helped the music shine even more than it already does.
The album is only about 30 minutes long, but this is a band who understand the importance of quality over quantity and as a result "The Great Bear" is both an entertaining and adventurous release all the way through it´s playing time. The first couple of times I listened to "The Great Bear", I actually didn´t think much of it. But it´s a grower type album and given enough spins the melodies begin to unfold, the many great ideas are discovered and personally I´ve begun to really appreciate how the concept of the album works. How the tracklist is put together, the lyrics and of course the memorable songwriting. A 3.5 - 4 star (75%) rating is deserved.