Review: Quiet – …and so it was

Style: metalcore (mixed vocals)
Review by: Josh
Country: US-FL
Release date: 18 June, 2021

It’s always nice to check out the first release of a band right as it drops. More often than not, it’s a nice pulse check on the metal scene at the time. What is Quiet like, and what can they tell us?

Things are looking pretty good overall, it seems. There’s never a truly unpleasant moment on this album, as every segment of every song is consistently quality, with the worst moments being merely decent. This is due to the great arranging skills of the members of Quiet. They’re not consistently laying down killer riffs, but they always know just what to add to a middling one to boost its quality up a notch. In particular, they are fantastic at layering. Oftentimes they have three or four separate instruments playing the same melody at once, culminating in fantastic tonal blends the likes of which I’ve rarely heard. They don’t just stick with the same few instruments as most bands, either – across this album you’ll hear saxophone, synths, and even bagpipes effortlessly integrated into Quiet‘s metalcore sound. Overall, …and so it was is a diverse and exciting listen.

It is marred from time to time, though, by Quiet‘s compositional restlessness. They try for the Between the Buried and Me approach of rapidly shifting songs made up of many small, diverse yet integrated segments. This generally works out, but it not uncommonly leads to the band playing something excellent, but then moving away from it after only a few bars, leaving the listener unsatisfied and wanting more. The band also seems to not have the slightest idea how to end a song. Almost half of the songs end with hard-cuts to breakdowns, and not particularly good ones either – a good deal of these venture into Aggressively Palm Muting Open Strings territory, with little else present to make the listening experience worthwhile. The band’s generally successful experimentation also goes wrong from time to time, leaving the listener more confused than anything else (seriously, what was with that robot voice segment???).

These would be far less frustrating if the highs of this album weren’t so high. The best parts of this record reach legitimate 10/10 territory. Two of these in particular, the chorus on “Clouded Eyes” and the guitar/sax double solo on “Assimilate”, are among my favorite musical moments of the year. The former justifies clean vocals in metalcore better than any other song I’ve heard in the genre, and the latter is exactly the kind of innovation that the genre needs right now. Even these, however, cannot be enjoyed to their fullest due to Quiet‘s songwriting decisions. The former only comes up twice (in a 7-minute song!) and the latter is a victim of a breakdown hard-cut right as it’s truly peaking. It’s maddening to see a band so skilled not give themselves the chance to properly demonstrate their own abilities. 

Despite its flaws, though, …and so it was is truly a fine album, and I sense great potential in Quiet to take it to the next level some time in the future. They’ve demonstrated a clear ability to create fantastic music, and with a little refinement in the songwriting department I believe they can put out something truly great. 

Recommended tracks: Clouded Eyes, Dark Sky, Assimilate, The Sun Will Not Rise
Recommended for fans of: Periphery, Between the Buried and Me
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook

Label: self-released

Quiet is:
– Josh Adams (guitars)
– Matt Tartaglia (guitars)
– Adam Hutton (vocals)