50 Best Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Albums Of 2017
42. While She Sleeps – You Are We
Despite 2017 spewing forth very few brilliant metalcore records, You Are We is easily the best album from British darlings While She Sleeps.
Its melodies, its riffs, its energy… all of it is leaps and bounds above the quintet’s two prior discs, neither of which – although strong objectively and beloved by the band’s legions of fans – were able to inspire the kind of visceral response from me that this fifty-minute titan of metallic muscularity did.
You Are We is a pleasant surprise from the very start, lulling itself to life with a title track opened by classical, acoustic guitars and symphonic backing. But such beauty only punctuates the first of many destructive breakdowns, delivered by melodic leads straight out of an In Flames record.
Choruses like those of the bouncing “Silence Speaks” ring with a catchiness that While She Sleeps has never quite been able to fully tap into before, while cameos from such young rock mavens as Oli Sykes are bound to set the group’s target demographics’ hearts aflutter.
Alongside melodic death metal guitars, hints of groove metal are even beginning slide into the While She Sleeps style, shaking skulls throughout a plethora of pummelling verses and pre-choruses.
As a result, You Are We finds itself stumbling across a very rare but flawless formula: it is both direct and diverse.
For avid metalcore lovers, then, this disc is truly unmissable.