Here's the problem with returning to form; you can't do it once and call it there. Each subsequent effort has to be a part of a process that continues, building on both a renewed foundation and, God willing, renewed fan support. Suicide Silence have always been fighters – from the highs and lows of genre-defining classics to rising again after the worst personal loss, to re-sculpting an identity in the wake of dividing a fanbase. But fighting spirit alone is rarely ever enough to keep the train rolling; especially when most of the passengers got off two stops before.
Two key events led us to where that train is stationed post-2017s self-titled. The fortunately timed anniversary of debut The Cleansing, long regarded their or anyone else's strongest crack at the genre, helped to swing the pendulum back in their favor at a time when fanbase solidarity was needed most crucially, while follow-up Become The Hunter took huge strides to distance itself with a return to a far more familiar deathcore sound.
Remember… You Must Die has the advantage of starting in the shadow of both of these efforts rather than when public opinion was at its lowest, and from the off the theme seems to run over this uninterrupted. Take the creative one-two of the multi-part "title track", which brings the noise like it's 2008 all over again after a soft lead; a brash barrage of drop-tuned aggression that knowingly sacrifices any attempt at widened boundaries at the altar of back to basics ear smashing. It's the purest of all the pieces on offer by some distance and feels like the most obvious statement – Suicide Silence are back, hear us roar.
That attention to detail in reviving the earlier sound also persists in the tracks that do push outward from their source material. "Fucked For Life" veers uncomfortably, teasingly close at times to the Korn-esque "dark days" before fighting back the growth with old-school savagery and uninhibited violence, while "God Be Damned" sparks a destructive riot over trace melodic elements that slows just enough in the centre to make the power of the climax all the more chaotic.
"Be Deceived" is a strange but intriguing beast unto itself, a wild animal that bucks and thrashes unpredictably from tempo change to blastbeat, luring you in with still moments before going for your throat; reared on the old fuel and hungry for the new. The "old" mentality doesn't quite cover all the tracks, however; closer "Full of Void" juggles too many pieces never really making up its mind on which genre it wants to be, despite taking probably too much runtime to decide.
With a sound firmly rooted in the familiar, if Become The Hunter wasn't enough to convince you that Suicide Silence are back on rails then Remember… You Must Die is hard-as-nails evidence that they have fully re-embraced the past. It runs the feel of classic, chugging deathcore through a raw death metal de-filter, while avoiding for the most part returning to a holding pattern rather than using momentum to take off. If you're looking for a dose of classic deathcore from one of the bands that defined what classic deathcore is, this is going to scratch that itch with a sledgehammer.
