Silvertomb, the doom and gothic metal band led by former Type O Negative members Kenny Hickey and Johnny Kelly, have released a lyric video for “Brain Matter / No God.” It’s the opening track on the Silvertomb new album, The Interpretation Of Nightmares, out Nov. 13 on Steamhammer. It’s the band’s second album and their first since 2019. No San Diego date has been announced.
The Song That Started the Silvertomb New Album
According to Blabbermouth, which posted the video on Oct. 16, “Brain Matter / No God” was the first song written for the record. Hickey explains:
“‘Brain Matter/No God’ was the first song written and opens the record with the heavy, thematic riff that returns in one form or the other throughout the work. The lyrics describe a nightmare in which the dreamer is shot and experiences his own death inside a dream.”
That recurring riff hints that the Silvertomb new album is built as one continuous piece, which fits the title. The first single from the Silvertomb new album, “No Way To Live,” is described as “a slightly faster track,” with lyrics about “rejection and pain.”
Who’s in Silvertomb
- Kenny Hickey – vocals, guitar (ex-Type O Negative, Danzig)
- Johnny Kelly – drums (ex-Type O Negative, Danzig)
- Joe James – guitar (ex-Agnostic Front)
- Hank Hell – bass (Sheer Terror)
- Aaron Joos – guitar, keyboards, vocals
That’s a lot of New York hardcore and goth-metal history in one lineup, and the keyboard player is a big part of it. In a 2019 interview with Antihero, quoted by Blabbermouth, Kelly said that adding a keyboard player “kind of changed everything,” and that the band went back and added layers to older songs that had no keys.
The Interpretation Of Nightmares Tracklist
Here is the eight-song tracklist for the Silvertomb new album, as published by Blabbermouth. The two singles so far are track 1 and track 7.
- Brain Matter / No God
- Ascension
- Graves In The Sky
- You Know
- Prayer For The Paranoid
- Distorted
- No Way To Live
- When Will You Learn?
Why the Silvertomb New Album Took Seven Years
Silvertomb’s debut, Edge Of Existence, came out in 2019. Blabbermouth says a tour with Monster Magnet had been booked before the pandemic shut everything down. Hickey looked back on 2020 to 2024 this way:
“Just as things were really beginning to take off for SILVERTOMB, our hands were suddenly tied for a number of years due to the pandemic and its long-lasting aftermath; on top of that, I had a drinking problem that urgently needed sorting out.”
The press material says those difficulties are “thankfully history.” It also calls the record “an atmospherically dense doom metal masterpiece.” That’s the label’s description, not SDMETAL’s verdict. We’ll judge when we hear the whole album.
How Much Type O Is in It?
Fans will ask, so here’s Kelly in his own words from 2019, via Blabbermouth: “It doesn’t sound like TYPE O, but, obviously, you have two guys from TYPE O NEGATIVE in the band. It’s going to have resemblance.” He described the sound as “a continuation” of Seventh Void, the band he and Hickey had before, and “more layered and textured – not to the extent that we would do in TYPE O NEGATIVE, but it has a little bit of that flavor to it.” He also called it “a more rock-oriented approach than the slow-paced, doomy aspect that TYPE O had.” The new single, though, leans into doom. Whether the rest of the Silvertomb new album does too, we’ll find out on Nov. 13.
Any Tour Dates?
Not for San Diego. No Silvertomb tour dates, in San Diego or anywhere else, appear in the material SDMETAL reviewed, and no North American run tied to the album has been announced. Doom fans who want something live sooner have Dopethrone’s Soda Bar show on Jan. 17. For more on what’s happening locally, see our San Diego metal scene roundup and the bigger picture in our state of metal report.
The Silvertomb new album, The Interpretation Of Nightmares, is out Nov. 13 on Steamhammer. SDMETAL will post any Southern California dates if they’re announced.
