Every album that Silverstein have come out with has stood on its own with a unique character and direction – Dead Reflection is a far more intense and personal album for the band than anything they’ve previously released. The ninth studio album from the Canadian post-hardcore group is an accomplishment they’re ready to celebrate, and a time they’re wanting to reflect upon, with Australia when the band tour in May. “We went out on a limb with some of the production we did and the chances we took,” says vocalist Shane Told. “We’ve progressed over the years relatively slowly – if you compare some of our newer albums with some of our first, they are very different but the path to get there made sense and I think our fans appreciate that.
“Dead Reflection was a record I needed to make – I was in a dark place and creatively, I needed to channel that a little bit, make a record that was dark and [was] big-sounding, production-wise, and encompassed the lyrical subject matter into the production.”
In not taking their time in developing each album, Told agrees that this release would have resulted in a very different album. “We do put out a record every other year like clockwork,” he says, “I think it’s all about putting in the work, I think, and finding that time and place.
“I was going through a pretty dark time – For me it was a little bit cathartic to make that music, therapeutic in a way to get that stuff out of me because I had been holding it in for the better part of a year – that combination came together and we weer able to make a pretty special record.
That self-applied therapy helped Told to not only release Dead Reflection but helped him to move forward. “A lot of the time when somebody writes a record, it’s like they’re looking back on something – for me, it wasn’t, I was in the midst of it, I was writing about things and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to me.
“Dead Reflection is a new story, starting with the trauma I faced and then leading into the end of the record, being like, ‘When is my wake-up call going to happen?’
“When I wrote ‘Wake Up’ and ‘Whiplash’, those were not about things that had happened, those were about things I thought were going to happen to me by staying on this path – by writing about them, it made them very real, scared me straight a little bit. I was in such a bad place, I felt worthless.
“Once we came up with the lyrics for Dead Reflection, it pulled me out of the funk a little bit, made me feel I am capable, that I do have value – a combination of things pulled me out of it and today, I’ve never felt better. I used to think I was happy years ago but now I know I wasn’t because I am now.”
