EP REVIEW: The World Without Us - "Silver Tongues"
“Another amazing album that was a product of the 2020 lockdown that you need to hear”
by Jesse Smith
In all seriousness, name 3 things that came from Nebraska that are worth talking about. If you said Corn and Cornhuskers then you got 2 of 3 and let me give you the other, metalcore 4 piece The World Without Us. It all starts with founding member Drew Tuzson in 2019 with the intent on starting something serious. In the following year the world went dark and it’s very safe to say that it was not a great time to be a musician in some sense, but in some sense it was. As everyone was tucked away in their thoughts and homes, writing music for Drew and a lot of us was to write music. In the last 2 years of writing and recording, a covid baby popped out and it was a full length album titled “Silver Tongues”. Later on the band solidified a full lineup and have been quite busy and causing buzz in the Nebraska metalcore scene. This album originally was supposed to be a sort of time capsule for Drew’s children which I think is a pretty sick little tid-bit but the work evolved into so much more. Talking about Life and Love and everything that resonates with being human, this album has something for everyone to latch onto.
Artwork for “Silver Tongues”
As I listened to this album front to back, I noticed that this band’s big selling point to me were the gigantic choruses that hit almost like a breakdown, but instead of it being the heavy kind, it’s more of an emotional breakdown. Starting with song one titled “Windup // Windout”, the chorus drop is at 1:47 in the song and you feel the build while you’re listening to it. It has the Australian melodic metalcore feel to it, if you know you know. This album in entirety isn’t the metalcore that you want to bang around in a mosh pit to, it’s more emotional and thought provoking and has a 50/50 mix of singing and screaming which both sound flawless. Songs like “The Forevergreen” and title track “Silver Tongues” are the best showcases of what I’m talking about. With a very atmospheric vibe in the instrumentals, the vocals tend to flow like a river going in and out of the singing and screaming but having a flow that matches the song. But for you heavy hitters out there, the song “The New Disease” is the one for you. Wouldn’t be a true metalcore album if there wasn’t at least one heavier banger now would it? But don’t let the beginning slow you down from listening to the song. It starts off slow and again, that atmospheric vibe, but then hits that half time heavy we all love. My personal favorite song is the song “Heroindarkness” which was one of the singles that was released prior to the album. I thought the opening line “Soaked in Bleach, Yet still unclean” was a very witty and creative opening line that grasped my attention immediately.
To wrap this up, “Silver Tongues” is a great listen and is filled with emotion. I must warn you, this is not the average metalcore album with the median song length being 5 minutes, it is a very long album clocking in over an hour total. I mean let's face it, when you’re a product of the 2020 lockdown, you have so much pent up emotions from sadness to anger and frustration that you need to get it out and there was a lot to say and feel so I get it. This a debut album for the band and I truly am excited to see the direction the band takes artistically. You can feel the passion as you listen and I hope that never goes away. Sky's the limit since this is the band’s first release which makes me anxious to see them grow from here.