156/Silence has never been interested in playing it safe, and From A Distance is the clearest proof yet, though "safe" was never really the risk with this band; the risk was always whether ambition would outpace execution. It doesn't. The Pittsburgh band's sixth full-length is a hauntingly cinematic record where razor-sharp intellect collides with unbridled sonic fury, and what's striking is how deliberately the group leans into atmosphere and emotional weight rather than simply piling on intensity for its own sake. Formed in 2015 out of a shared history of artistic passion and personal loss, the band has spent a decade refusing to color inside the lines of standard heavy music, and their catalog reads like a band actively working against its own comfort zone: the unhinged chaos of 2018's Undercover Scumbag, the savage technicality of 2020's Irrational Pull (comparisons to Converge and Botch felt earned, not aspirational), the tonal widening of 2022's Narrative, and the genuine crossover moment of 2024's People Watching. Arriving as their first release under Pure Noise Records, From A Distance could have played it as a victory lap. Instead, it digs deeper as gut-wrenching, atmospheric, and noticeably more mature without losing an ounce of teeth.
That maturity isn't a marketing line; it's audible, and it's earned the hard way. Following the devastating and unexpected loss of longtime, beloved bassist Lukas Booker in early 2025, the band honored his memory with the standalone single "Our Parting Ways," and that grief isn't incidental to this record; it's load-bearing. You can hear it in the pacing, in the restraint, in the way the band lets silence do work it might once have filled with noise. Producer Josh Schroeder, who's helped shape records for Lorna Shore, The Plot In You, and King 810, deserves real credit here: he lets the band hit like a freight train without ever crowding out the atmosphere, which is a harder balance to strike than it sounds. Opening the album with a sample lifted from Apple TV's Severance is a bold, slightly on-the-nose choice, but it works as it announces the record's debt to the melancholic dread of Resident Evil and Silent Hill, and the surrealist unease of Twin Peaks, before a single riff lands.
What's most interesting is how the band handles its own recent success. Guitarist Jimmy Howell has noted that People Watching was the first time they seriously experimented with traditional choruses and vocal hooks, and the gamble paid off commercially with anthems like "Better Written Villain." The obvious move would be to chase that formula. Instead, they double down on melody while refusing to sand down the edges; "Errick Easterday," "Control Burns," and "No Arms" are as mechanically brutal as anything in their back catalog, and the whiplash between hard-hitting rock rhythm and dense synth experimentation within single tracks makes the record genuinely hard to pin down, in the best way.
Instrumentally, the band is as tight as ever: Kyle O'Connell's drumming, Mike Ernst's bass groove, and the Howell/Ryan Wilkinson guitar interplay all give the record real weight, but the more interesting shift is in Jack Murray's writing. Where past records mined tension and psychological strain from uncomfortably close range, here Murray pulls back to something closer to social observation, and the record is stronger for the distance. "Proxy Idols" is a pointed, if not especially subtle, take on celebrity worship; "Order & Entropy" is more successful, actually mirroring its subject matter in the music's structure rather than just describing it in the lyrics. The standout is "Swept From Under (Call of the Void)," where Murray's account of intrusive thoughts feels genuinely unguarded rather than performed, and it's the kind of song that earns its heaviness instead of assuming it. The title track, featuring Alex Reade of Make Them Suffer, is billed as a twisted love song, and it's the most overtly Twin Peaks-coded moment on the record, for better or worse; it's atmospheric and effective, if slightly indulgent.
The guest spots elsewhere are well-chosen rather than obligatory: Tony Castrati's appearance on "Collateral" adds grit without stealing focus, and the Mike Hranica feature on "Cannon Fodder" is the rare metalcore guest verse that actually justifies its own existence. The back half: "An Early Exit," "Secret Room," "Phoenix Dies," and closer "After Dusk" sustain momentum better than most records this dense manage to. Howell has cited Thrice and Bring Me The Horizon as touchstones, and it shows: those are bands that expanded their sound without losing their identity, and From A Distance is 156/Silence's most convincing case yet that they belong in that conversation. It's a record built on genuine loss and genuine risk, and it mostly earns both.
Embrace the grief and realize that loss is something we all carry together; here's the official music video for their track Swept From Under (Call of the Void):
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