ROLLINS BAND - The End of Silence

If you like Black Sabbath, King Crimson and The Stooges you simply cannot dislike Rollins Band. This album, The End of Silence, is the best proof for this. Combining the fury of The Stooges with dark and psychedelic riffs taken from Black Sabbath’s book, and progressive elements reminding of King Crimson, Henry Rollins & co., with the assistance of the brilliant producer Andy Wallace (Aerosmith, Slayer, White Zombie), have managed to bring out with The End of Silence one of the band’s best sets of songs. 

Close in style to Hard Volume (1989), but much darker than Weight, which would be released two years later,  The End of Silence is one of the band’s essential records and at the same time one of the essential records of the 90s.

What I love about The End of Silence is that it doesn’t strictly fall under a single musical direction, as it enriches an alternative metal/hard rock skeleton with doom metal, hardcore punk and even progressive metal elements, which make the music have a totally different dynamic. In other words, it shows us the band’s true colours, and when I say this I’m not trying to discredit their other materials, Hard Volume is like a rehearsal for The End of Silence, and Weight is another excellent album but seen from a different standpoint, let’s say more mainstream, lighter or softer. More precisely it is the same as for Slayer, after Hell Awaits (1985) they had Reign in Blood (1986), and then things took a slightly different direction with South of Heaven (1988).

To make a top of the best albums of the 90s and not include at least one from the Rollins Band, more precisely this one, with the other being (you guessed right!) Weight, is like leaving out Metallica - Metallica (1991), Pantera – Vulgar Display of Power (1992), Soundgarden – Superunknown (1994), Down - NOLA (1995), or any other truly important album of that period comes to mind. 

It is very difficult for me to name the best songs on the record, each of them battling hard to prove it deserved to be part of the chosen ones. From the melodic Grip and You Didn't Need, to the dynamic Tearing or the complex Blues Jam, to the hit, if I may call it that, Low Self Opinion and the chaotic What Do You Do, each of the record’s compositions show a different face of Henry Rollins, a side of his personality viewed from a different angle. I would like to end by saying that The End of Silence is an album that simply draws you in with its excellent performances.

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