SILVERSTEIN

“The Ontario, Canada-bred rockers have risen from their underground roots to the top of the emo and post-hardcore genre after [over] two decades in the industry.” – Billboard

Silverstein enters their 25th year with two full-length albums set for 2025. The band that NME calls “legendary,” and Loudwire placed among the Most Prolific Rock & Metal Artists of the 21st Century, continues to innovate and inspire on forward-thinking records and at crowd-embracing live shows.

Sequestering away together in a remote desert was such a revelation for Shane Told (vocals), Paul Koehler (drums), Josh Bradford (guitar), Billy Hamilton (bass), and Paul Marc Rousseau (guitar) that they returned with their best work yet: the stunning and invigorating Antibloom and Pink Moon.

The band made Antibloom and Pink Moon at Fireside Sound, a recording studio and filming location on 35 private acres in Joshua Tree, California. The immersive desert area has offered life-affirming creative fire to iconic troubadours like Gram Parsons, Queens Of The Stone Age, and now Silverstein.

They arrived in Joshua Tree with 25 completed demos and chose their 16 favorites. Koehler suggested splitting the music into two albums and turning 2025 into a year-long celebration. This will allow listeners the space to absorb and connect with the songs, like “Mercy Mercy” (a vicious takedown of sadomasochistic doom-scrolling), the anxiety-examining “Don’t Let Me Get Too Low,” and “Cherry Coke” (which began with a melody from Bradford) from Antibloom, before digging into Pink Moon.

Rousseau and Told composed the majority of the music for the diverse pair of records. Cassadee Pope and Dayseeker’s Rory Rodriguez feature on “Autopilot” and “Drain the Blood,” respectively, both found on Pink Moon.

Now a Las Vegas, Nevada resident, Told expanded his own personal process beyond his bedroom, journeying to Los Angeles for a series of writing trips with outside collaborators for a fresh perspective. Those included the team of Sam Guaiana, Austin Coupe, and Josh Landry (who contributed to Antibloom’s “Skin & Bones”), John Lundin, Lucky West, Kevin Thrasher, and Curtis Peoples (who cowrote Pierce The Veil’s multiplatinum “King for a Day” and a variety of others).

“When you’ve done 11 albums, it can become harder to write without repeating yourself,” Told says. “This was a cool way to shake it up. Many of these writers are younger than me; some grew up on our band. I made new friends and developed new ideas without getting stuck on songs. It kicked my ass a little bit and gave me some new confidence, having that feedback and exchange about my songs.”

Guaiana (Neck Deep, Holding Absence, Bayside), a Toronto native (now in Los Angeles) who worked on A Beautiful Place to Drown and Misery Made Me, produced, engineered, and mixed the new songs.

While neither album is a concept record, they share some thematic threads, particularly about death, mortality, and the duality inherent in solitude, which can be peaceful but lonely.

As the group explained in a collective statement, the Antibloom title reflects the desert's harsh nature; Pink Moon conjures its simultaneous beauty. (Towards the end of the recording process, the band members briefly abandoned their work to step outside and embrace one such pink moon together.)

“Five Canadians went to Joshua Tree for five weeks and made a cool double album greatly inspired by a magical place,” the drummer says. “It was the first time we’d ventured away in years, and it opened up something special. We’ve released a lot of music in 25 years. We could’ve just done an anniversary tour and had a great time. But we are still driven to make new music that’s better than what we’ve made before. We have that spark and still feel like kids in a candy store when we go into a studio.”

Silverstein’s Discovering the Waterfront (2005), recently certified gold in their native Canada, remains a touchstone classic. A Beautiful Place to Drown (2020) earned a Rock Album of the Year nomination at the Juno Awards. Antibloom and Pink Moon are vibrant reminders of why the group remains special and why Alternative Press readers voted Told among the Five Best Post-Hardcore Vocalists of all time.

Audiences sing and scream along in packed theaters, at festivals, and on tours around the world with groups like Simple Plan, Rise Against, Good Charlotte, Pierce The Veil, Beartooth, Underoath, Billy Talent, The Used, and Boysetsfire.

Silverstein classics like “My Heroine,” “Smile in Your Sleep,” “The Afterglow,” and “Infinite” are postmodern anthems for a devoted following earned with passionate performances and authentic artistry. As recently as 2024, The Needle Drop called them “emo hardcore legends.” While their nearly 1 billion streams reflect that, they all grew up in a scene where the music and message come first.

Silverstein formed in 2000 in Burlington, Ontario, Canada, inspired by similarly minded emotional post-hardcore groups like Hot Water Music, The Get Up Kids, and their hometown heroes in Grade.

When Broken is Easily Fixed (2003) and Discovering the Waterfront (2005) established the band’s unique identity. More recent records, like Dead Reflection (2017), A Beautiful Place to Drown (2020), and Misery Made Me (2022), broadened their scope without losing sight of the soaring melody and energetic angst at their core, with shades of everything from shimmering indie pop to synth-wave.

Four of the five guys in Silverstein have been there since 2000; Rousseau first contributed to This Is How The Wind Shifts (2013). Many of the group’s favorite bands survived for only a couple of albums and then went away, and their contemporaries suffered lineup changes, breakups, and reunions.

“There’s no fault in bands who haven’t been able to do it, but I think maintaining our lineup has been one of our strengths,” Koehler admits. “We share so many goals and respect for this band, through the highs and the lows, that we aren’t going to jump ship. We share a drive to write the best songs we can, push our boundaries, and retain an authentic respect for the music we’ve made in the past.”

As Silverstein concluded in their shared statement: “We put everything we’ve ever learned/felt/experienced into these albums. They say it takes an artist their whole life to write their debut album, but starting this band so young, it felt like it took 25 years to write Antibloom and Pink Moon. This is our pinnacle and a definitive collection of the musical style we’ve pioneered over 25 years.”