Description
With Bride’s third album the band moved away from the speed metal and near thrash of “Live to Die” and back closer to the style of their debut. However, the overall sound is quite a bit more diverse, not quite as dark and more melodic as well. A song like “Fool Me Once” still features those wailing Dale Thompson vocals and a vicious guitar assault. As well, “All Hallows Eve” is a darker song both musically and lyrically. However, other songs like “Until the End We Rock” are more melodic and anthemic in nature. Still, “Fool Me Once”, “Hot Down South”, “Until the End We Rock” and “All Hallow’s Eve” all rock hard ‘n heavy. Each and every song possesses a sing-along quality coupled with crunchy guitars and mostly mid-paced tempos. Frankly, I think the entire album is solid, right up through the end with “Rock Those Blues Away.” This closing track is a blues-based number, something that would become more prevalent in Bride’s future releases. Indeed, the song acted as a bridge to the more blues based, Aerosmith-inspired albums that would follow.
Bride 1989
One noticeable difference between this CD and the last two albums was a change in lyrical direction. While “Live to Die” and “Show No Mercy” were openly and boldly Christian in nature, “Silence is Madness” deals more with social issues. Whereas past songs like “Forever in Darkness”, “Fire & Brimstone” and “Hell No” were pretty blatant in their turn-or-burn message, a song like “Hot Down South” is a far more obscure in it’s approach. As well, while the song “Until the End We Rock” states, “satisfies your mind, can’t save your soul”, the song is more of a rock and roll anthem and not specifically evangelistic in nature. Because of this Bride took some heat at the time from fans who accused the band of selling out. The album also charged up some anti-rock preachers who pointed to the band’s “watered down message” as proof that the band weren’t genuine Christians. Of course the entire argument was ridiculous to begin with. The band were offering a positive, Christian message in a music scene that was otherwise filled with evil imagery.
All in all, “Silence is Madness” is another great heavy metal album from Bride. It rounds out their early trilogy before their sound would begin to drastically change. “Silence is Madness” is a classic in every sense of the word.
For many years the original Pure Metal CD pressing of “Silence is Madness” was out of print and worth quite a bit of money on auction sites. In 2011 Retroactive Records re-released “Silence is Madness” in a six-panel digi-pack format as part of the 3 disc set along with “Show No Mercy” and “Live to Die” Each disc comes in it’s own digi-pack. The sound has been vastly improved with modern mastering by J Powell at Steinhaus. The package includes the original cover art, lyrics and a commentary about the album by guitarist Troy Thompson.
