Brutally honest: Silent Theory gets right to the point on new album

Silent Theory is not mincing words on its latest album “Tell Us How It Ends.”

The songs are lyrically direct and unapologetic with aggressive guitars, heavy beats and bass that emphasize what each single on the album is attempting to convey.

“Tell Us How It Ends” will not be released until Sept. 13, but fans have been getting a taste of the new music with recently released “Emptiness in You.”

“We’re really excited to be playing the song because this whole album, and specifically on this song, we really tried to focus on maintaining whatever essence, I guess you could call it, that is Silent Theory,” said Bob James, rhythm guitarist for the band. “We’re really trying to explore some different avenues. I think as a whole, this album is going to be a lot heavier and a lot more poignant.”

James said “Emptiness in You” is a catchy, melodic song with lyrics that everybody can relate to when it comes to a relationship, whether romantic, personal or work related.

“(It is) where it’s a lot more work than it needs to be and it feels like you’re just constantly dumping yourself into this relationship and really pushing hard to make it work,” James explained. “And then, at some point, you realize it’s just not fulfilling either of us. And you’re kind of the reason that I am so drained. We usually try to write a little bit more abstract lyrics, but we felt like this was a topic that people could really relate to, so we wrote this one a little bit more on the nose. We’re pretty excited about it. It’s a lot of fun to play live that’s for sure.”

The final single to be released from the new album is called “Made Me This Way.”

“It’s definitely a lot more aggressive,” James said. “It’s kind of a common theme throughout this whole album, as far as the tormented relationship, whether that’s professional, romantic, or what have you... Usually we write from a slightly more compassionate place. Not intentionally, but inadvertently, we ended up having a lot of themes of mental health throughout it... This one’s definitely a little bit more of like, ‘I’ve been doing my part and now it’s time for you to do your part,’ kind of attitude. So I definitely think ‘Made Me This Way’ really exemplifies that.”

Lead vocalist Dakota Jerns does the majority of the lyric writing which his bandmates support. Jerns joined the band in 2014 about a year after its former vocalist, Nick Osborn left.

“He’s just unbelievable at telling stories,” James said of Jems. “He does it in such a way that’s very pointed, but at the same time very ambiguous, to the point where people can really listen to it and hopefully it applies to something they have going on in their life. Dakota and I can tell the same story and I will tell you a very literal, very straight up story, and Dakota could tell you a story that’s very intriguing and interesting. And so, we definitely let Dakota kind of run with that because he is much better at it than the rest of us for sure.”

The band tries to evolve with each album with each member contributing creatively.

“I will say, with this album in particular, we’ve been writing songs for a little while, and we wanted to make sure that we were pushing our boundaries and not getting into a cycle of just doing the same things over and over again,” James said. “We really tried to reach out and do some co-writes on this album, just so we could really kind of see other people’s processes and kind of get other people’s input. I think that’s been a fun process, just kind of experiencing other things, just kind of seeing how other people do it to make sure our process is fresh, so that we’re always growing and evolving.”