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Rating: “Sometimes I wake up in the night, disturbed by the sound of silence…”
In the Year of Our Lord 1999, a video game destined to become a cult was released, redefining the standards of survival horror, becoming a movie, and fascinating millions of gamers. Much of the game's success is due to its unsettling setting, a distorted reality, a parallel dimension that seemed to want to bind you to itself; credited to the great skill of the Konami game designers, but not only.
Another important component of the game was the music: composed by a (then) unknown Akira Yamaoka, the soundtrack of 'Silent Hill' exactly mirrors what the video game is: a hallucinatory experience, the portrait of a nightmarish dream, the desperate scream of the ghosts of our consciousness. A chilling guitar introduces us to the city of fog: "Silent Hill Main Theme" is a masterpiece; shivers down the spine, the image of a little girl and a single sentence… "The fear of blood tends to create fear for the flesh". Welcome.
The album mostly consists of dark-industrial flavored tracks: sick melodies, voices suspended in nothingness, frantic drumming. The tracks are short in duration: the shortest ones last only about fifteen seconds. Akira's use of electronics and the drum machine, as well as the numerous background effects, make the environment particularly disturbing. And so, the descent into hell begins, between a "Killed by Death" and a "Devil's Lyric". Are you afraid of the dark? Then "Fear of the Dark" is not for you. But the Paradise of "My Heaven" is also not reassuring. Particularly inspired is "I'll kill you", a headlong escape from the screaming darkness. It should be noted that the tracks are always alternated among themselves: industrial-influenced pieces, used in the more frenetic moments of the game, alternate with dark-ambient songs where fear becomes pressing, suffocating; claustrophobic atmospheres are created through the use of the piano and electronics based on synthesizers. Unfortunately, it must be said that these are pieces created for the video game; therefore, listening to them outside the original context loses some of their charm.
My personal advice to fully enjoy them is to turn off the light, lie on the floor, and feel the fear run down your skin. But the album isn't just that. There are also tracks that are easier on the ear, which are great even when decontextualized, and which I personally consider the best songs of the bunch: I particularly love the beautiful "Not Tomorrow (Lisa Mutating)", a heart-wrenching guitar melody accompanied by a very delicate keyboard, ideal for describing what I consider the most dramatic moment of Silent Hill, Lisa's death. Rich in pathos also is "Tears of…" in which a gently plucked guitar, a divine violin, and a piano with something magical unite in a melancholic symphony supported by a sampled drum. Worth mentioning is also "She", with its long electric guitar solo; the bizarre yet convincing "Silent Hill (Other Side)" with an (almost) cheerful melody; "Esperandote" is the only sung track, a song of operatic mold with a romantic and Spanish feel.
In summary, this album is quite challenging; the brief tracks are not easy to listen to and are quite homogeneous with each other. Undoubtedly, it is a rather moody work, so it is not recommended for “light” listening; listen to it before going to sleep and you will be guaranteed a night of nightmares.
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