The Silver
photo by Scott Kinkade

Horrendous & Crypt Sermon members form The Silver, announce debut LP, share new song

The Silver is a new band with some familiar faces from the metal world: brothers Matt and Jamie Knox from Philly death metallers Horrendous and Enrique Sagarnaga of Philly doomers Crypt Sermon (plus Nick Duchemin). “About three years ago, Enrique reached out with the goal of starting a metal band where we weren’t hiding behind the typical metal tropes,” Matt said. “We wanted to do something rooted in black metal sounds without being a black metal band—and with more vulnerable lyrics. We collectively wanted to find the magic in regular human experience, both horrific and sublime. Every song on the record is about one of those experiences.”

Their debut album, Ward of Roses, arrives October 15 via Gilead Media (pre-order), and first single “Fallow” is out now. It finds Matt trying on a new gothic metal clean vocal approach, and going back and forth with Nick’s harsh black metal screams. “This is the first time he’s done anything, which is crazy,” Matt said of Nick. “We’ve been friends for years, and we just had this hunch one day that he might have a really great scream. I think one of the reasons the record turned out the way it did is that Nick was going through a particularly rough period in his life at the time. He was able to transform that raw emotion into art.”

Nick’s scream is indeed great, as are Matt’s clean vocals, which are a far cry from what he does in Horrendous. Together, they create a highly effective dual vocal approach that pairs perfectly with The Silver’s genre-defying instrumental backdrop.

“I think it’s a pretty good overall statement of what the band is,” Matt said of the new song. “The song isn’t focused so much on anyone’s individual experience. It’s more of a universal meditation on love ending—and the fact that it does so often. We wanted to take this common experience and imbue it with the weight and beauty of myth, and this became the foundation of our lyrical approach—seeing and unveiling the sublime, the dramatic, the profound moments that shape a human life.”

Along with Matt’s new vocal and lyrical approach comes a new pseudonym, “V,” but according to a press release, the name isn’t an attempt at anonymity, but rather it “represents another way of being.” “When I’m onstage in Horrendous, I feel like I’m trying to embody the larger-than-life spirit of Iron Maiden or Judas Priest—the bands I grew up watching,” Matt aka V said. “But doing these kinds of vocals in The Silver felt different. In developing how I wanted my voice to sound, I started stepping out of my own ideas of sexuality and gender expressions. It became a way of diving in and figuring out who I really am.”

Listen to the new song and check out the artwork and tracklist below…

The Silver Ward of Roses

Tracklist
1. …First Utterance
2. Fallow
3. Breathe
4. Vapor
5. Gatekeeper
6. Behold, Five Judges
7. Ward of Roses
8. Then Silence…