US post-black metal band The Silver (feat. members of Horrendous and Crypt Sermon) release poignant new single »Memorias«
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania based post-black metal band The Silver (feat. members of Horrendous and Crypt Sermon) has released new single »Memorias« taken from their forthcoming sophomore album, »Looking Glass Hymnal Blue«, due out on March 20th, 2026 via Gilead Media.
Tracklist:
01. Looking Glass Hymnal Blue
02. Two Candles
03. Memorias
04. Tendrils
05. When The Moon Is Three
06. The Demon Bridge
07. Twilight Of Love
08. My Lone Dark Lantern
Courtesy of another/side:
The forthcoming sophomore effort from The Silver – »Looking Glass Hymnal Blue« – delivers far more than a compelling listen; it is an invitation, an exercise in the sacred, a hand reaching out to pull you within your own depths. If the band’s 2021’s LP »Ward Of Roses« set the stage with its emotive pairings of black and post-black metal, melodic riffing, and the flair of a vintage 80’s wine, »Looking Glass Hymnal Blue« has arrived to fulfill Ward’s promise: dazzle its audience, incite tears of both ecstasy and terror to carry them far beyond this world, and stretch them nearly to breaking by the curtain’s fall.
The album evokes emotion on all fronts, and latest single »Memorias« is a deeply personal track for The Silver drummer, Enrique Sagarnaga. He comments: “»Memorias« (spanish: Memories) is a song that reflects my experiences of personal growth and reflection while living in La Paz, Bolivia, and making sense of my Catholic upbringing when I was a teenager. Two churches there had an impact on me: Parroquia Santuario Inmaculada Concepción del Monticulo, and the Basilica of San Francisco. Aside from being places of worship, these churches were also places of extreme misery.”
Photo by Scott Kinkade
He continues: “I specifically remember that when the church let out from the Basilica, it became a frenzy of begging and busking – tons of locals clamoring to enter the doors and ask for both forgiveness and help. The Basilica, much like its Latin American contemporaries, has a complicated history intrinsically linked to the colonial forced labor practices of the time. The fact that Indigenous Aymara people constructed it under the guise of Catholicism affected me. At night, both of these places transformed into locations where young schoolchildren would meet to socialize and be with their sweethearts. At the Basilica in particular, the huge courtyard became a night market where people drank until dawn.” Lyrically, the song intends to “…reconcile several things: the history of these places (the implications of Catholicism in an indigenous-led country) and the romantic outlook and magic these places held at night, away from worship. These places represent many different things to different people simultaneously.”
Vocalist N. Duchemin comments on the previous single »When The Moon Is Three«: “»When The Moon Is Three« walks the listener through worlds of discovery; facing the unknown, the initiate dons the mask of fear as they are plunged through the hidden world of the mind. Upon returning from their journey, they are forever changed.”
»Looking Glass Hymnal Blue« is a towing achievement for The Silver, mining the furthest depths of its players both musically and emotionally. The compositions display staggeringly ambitious strides in both craft and vision, while lyrically, the band excavates their own haunted interiors with the hope of inciting the audience to do the same.
Asked about the process of creating this new record, guitarist/vocalist V states: “Our prior release, »Ward Of Roses«, was largely a leap of faith into musical exploration. While we had all been friends for years, we hadn’t worked together much musically and began the project with little more than a shared vision that, while profound, was largely obscured from us. So much of that record was real-time discovery, mapping out the dark corners of our sound (and selves) as we went along, realizing through the very act of creation what we were capable of and what we really wanted as a band. With »Looking Glass Hymnal Blue«, we already had our blueprint, so from there it became a question of how to fully explore what we set down on Ward. As with all of our projects, the answer was to make it bigger, more ambitious, more fearless – which is really to say, more distinctly us. We wanted to carve out music ornate and spacious enough to carry the weight of the concepts we were exploring and to elevate everything to be nearly mythic in scope.”
And mythic it is, thanks in no small part to acclaimed artist Paul Romano who fully designed, produced and created the album art and packaging for the record. Taken together, the art and musical compositions form a fully unified aesthetic world, with Romano drawing on motifs of mirrors, refraction, the double, and a plethora of mythological creatures and symbolism to reinforce the record’s lyrical themes.
While The Silver prefers to keep such matters open to the listener’s interpretation, N. Duchemin offers a few breadcrumbs on the lyrical trail: “Lyrically, »Looking Glass Hymnal Blue« is something of a beast of many faces; like the hydra of mythology. Each song (or head), is a representation of internal reflection, musing or suffering. The words speak, in abstract, on battles with ideas of self; attempts to overcome or change the lens of the mind, or memories of a walk into the realm of dreams.” V adds: “to listen to »Looking Glass Hymnal Blue« is to gaze into the mirror, into its multifarious reflections, to confront your own distorted shape and perhaps catch that small flash of self that can only be gathered through peripheral vision, through an amalgamation of the whole. Each song is both a hymn and a key, a rite to trespass beyond the door within.”
Recorded by the band alongside engineer Richie DeVon in Philadelphia, and mixed and mastered by Damian Herring, »Looking Glass Hymnal Blue« is slated for release on March 20, 2026 through Gilead Media. Pre-order the LP here:
gileadmedia.net | gileadmedia.bandcamp.com
The Silver live:
January 14-16 2027 Richmond, VA – Heart of Winter Fest
Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well