Gruesome return with Silent Echoes, a ferocious Death Metal onslaught, fueled by progressive, razor sharp musicianship. Celebrating over a decade as the finest purveyors of old-school Death Metal inspired by the legendary Chuck Schuldiner and the many iterations of Death, the new album sees Gruesome transition away from the no-frills riff-fests heard on their Savage Land and Twisted Prayers LPs, and shift towards a more nuanced form of terror. Silent Echoes is the quartet’strue put up or shut-up moment for one simple reason: It was written and recorded in the spirit of Death’s 1991 progressive death metal masterpiece, Human.
Listening to Miles Davis' originally released version of In a Silent Way in light of the complete sessions released by Sony in 2001 (Columbia Legacy 65362) reveals just how strategic and dramatic a studio construction it was. If one listens to Joe Zawinul's original version of "In a Silent Way," it comes across as almost a folk song with a very pronounced melody. The version Miles Davis and Teo Macero assembled from the recording session in July of 1968 is anything but. There is no melody, not even a melodic frame. There are only vamps and solos, grooves layered on top of other grooves spiraling toward space but ending in silence.