Heavy Song of the Week is a feature on Heavy Consequence breaking down the top metal, punk, and hard rock tracks you need to hear every Friday. This week, No. 1 goes to Alter Bridge’s “Silent Divide.”
Alter Bridge announced a US tour this week and marked the occasion with a new song, “Silent Divide,” their first studio material since 2022. The track is the lead single from their upcoming self-titled eighth studio album, set to arrive January 9th.
The five-minute cut sees the band at its heaviest. Mark Tremonti’s riffs come in a steady flow as the rhythm section of Brian Marshall and Scott Phillips pounds away. One gets the sense that the trio — also the instrumentalists in Creed — get to open up a bit when it’s time to perform under the Alter Bridge banner, tapping into a thicker and untempered style of grungy hard rock. Factor in the remarkable pipes of frontman Myles Kennedy, not to mention Tremonti’s own pristine backing vocals, and the track takes full flight.
Honorable Mentions:
Between the Buried and Me – “The Blue Nowhere”
BTBAM offered up the third and final single from their new album in the form of its title track, “The Blue Nowhere.” This one’s for the prog heads who might typically be turned away by the band’s more metal aesthetics, particularly the sporadic use of gutturals. There’s none of that here (clean-singing fans rejoice). In fact, this is a rather lush six-minute composition with peaks of grandeur — definitely the most overtly prog of the three album singles. No metal to be found, really.
Cold Steel – “No Escape”
Tampa’s Cold Steel dish out a modernized take on crossover thrash, as heard on “No Escape,” melding old-school thrash riffs with the bounce and breakdown-heavy style of contemporary hardcore and metalcore. They could just as well open for a Knocked Loose or a Testament, and both crowds would probably dig it. This type of punkish thrash always benefits from a vocalist that sounds totally unhinged, and Jose Menendez definitely fits that bill, delivering a delightfully devilish performance. Trivium is a solid point of reference for where Cold Steel fall on the genre spectrum, so it’s no surprise that Matt Heafy contributed to pre-production and arrangements and helped advise the band during the making of its forthcoming debut album, Discipline & Punish.
Sun Dont Shine – “What You Are”
After they claimed our HSOTW honor in June, we’re back with another single from Sun Dont Shine, the new supergroup featuring Crowbar’s Kirk Windstein and members of Type O Negative. Here they hit an almost trad-doom sound, riding head-nodding riffs that are rendered through a murky and sludgy tone, of which Windstein is a seasoned purveyor.