Tyrants has the perfect build up for the intro track. Straight from the start, you hear the high-pitched screams from lead singer Kellin Quinn. The song plays with calm parts and almost chaotic parts. It gives you a very melodic chorus. This song sets the tone for the album; controlled heavy chaos and softer touches in the middle.

Title song Complete Collapse doesn’t wait and comes right in after the first track is done. The layering is amazing in this song. It’s like there’s a tiny little demon waiting in the back until it’s his turn to scream along. There’s this calmer chorus with a scream on top that just feels exactly like that. A good sing along song with evil lurking in the back in the back.

Crosses is the song to break stuff on and stump your feet around. The melodic chorus makes it for the perfect metalcore/hardcore song in my book. Spencer Chamberlain of Underoath joins Sleeping With Sirens on this one. The screams near the end of the song are absolutely brutal. Again, it turns into controlled chaos before it all goes very melodic again.

Family Tree opens so calm, it sounds like relaxation music. Then it builds up to share its feelings with you. It talks about family. ‘But the roots underneath are dead in the ground, You chose to walk away’. They always say you can’t choose your family. But you can choose how to deal with it. Destroying things is easier than to build things up, so a lot of people will walk away. But some might come back later when they found the strength to deal with it. All of this is poured into an emotional melodic metalcore song.

Charlotte Sands joins on Let You Down. Hip Hop sounding beats in parts of the verses and very heavy drums by Matty Best in the choruses give this song a loud and clear heartbeat. The heavy and low breakdown is perfect for this track, top it off with the voices of Kellin and Charlotte battling each other while harmonizing, and you get this powerful melodic song.

Ryan Santiago, better known as Royal & the Serpent, joins on Be Happy. A song about the feeling that you should be happy, you have no reason to not be happy. But yet you’re not. The songs asks: ‘Can anyone else relate?’ Yeah, I think a lot of people can relate. This melodic, quite catchy song surprises with a very heavy breakdown. This probably is musically the best way to explain the feeling that they are talking about.

Us has this grungy riff to it. Dorothy joins on this one. The song title couldn’t be clearer about the subject of the song. Two people contemplating their relationship. What about you, me, love and trust and everything around that. A very rhythmic and banging song.

I just love the song title already; Ctrl + Alt + Del. This used to reboot computers without warning. It was always a funny prank to play on somebody who didn’t know what that key combination did. Now it just gives you a menu to choose from. In this case, the song wishes that life had a Ctrl Alt and Del key combination. Sometimes rewinding a part of your life and doing it differently might seem a very tempting option. It’s probably a good thing that those buttons only exist on computers. I love how this song freaks out at the end. That’s the point where you don’t care anymore and everything around you might explode.

Bloody Knuckles gives a leading part to the bass in the first verse. Even though the topic is serious, the song feels very danceable. It’s a big middle finger in the air to people around you who don’t understand you. This is for the people that don’t fit in the so-called normal world. Like the song says; ‘You all think I’m crazy anyway’. The music fits that feeling perfectly.

Mr. Nice Guy is the perfect follow up to Bloody Knuckles. ‘No more playing nice, no more playing’ That one line of lyric can tell you the whole story of the song. At the end, this lyric is screamed so loud and clear, that it’s almost scary. I love that they left in the applause of people who were around in the studio who recorded this. It’s an amazing feeling to finally be able to say No More. And that’s exactly what this song does.

Apathetic is quite average. That’s what I wrote until I heard the breakdown. That’s one epic breakdown. But the rest of the song sounds as a quite simple sing along song. Closer Grave opens with an acoustic guitar and a very clean and clear voice. It sounds like it’s going to stay that way. That’s very unexpected. I guess we end on a beautiful clean song then. A very welcome surprise that I enjoyed every second of.

Sometimes it’s really hard to put a genre on Sleeping With Sirens. They have so many influences and combine all these into their own unique sound. I’ve tried to describe it with genres I thought of while listening to the music, but it’s perfectly possible that other people think of other sounds that are a characteristic to other genres. Either way, this album is an absolute blast to listen to. It’s heavy, it’s loud, it’s melodic, it has screams and breakdowns. It’s controlled chaos at its best. 

Sleeping With Sirens is:
Kellin Quinn – vocals
Justin Hills – bass
Nick Martin – guitar
Matty Best – drums

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