Angry Metal Guy
Anguish is an emotion commonly portrayed in many metal subgenres. While other artists tend to convey it in a general or abstract sense, The Reticent’s brand of anguish is specific and viscerally personal. Huck N Roll bid them a somber welcome to this site in 2016 with On the Eve of a Goodbye, an introspective work about the suicide of founder Chris Hathcock’s close friend. In 2020, The Oubliette unflinchingly detailed the merciless deterioration of an Alzheimer’s patient from onset to demise. Now, after five long years, The Reticent returns with another progressive metal entry, this time to shine a light on the topic of mental illness and its causal relationship with suicide. Drawing from Hathcock’s own struggles and experiences, please promises to be as gut-wrenching as ever.
Similar to The Reticent’s more recent output, the prevailing style of please is slick and smooth modern prog metal with occasional death and black metal tinges. Hathcock’s singing voice is as crisp and clear as ever, and he accentuates the emotional impact with well-placed growls and screams. The effortless melding of light and heavy frequently reminds me of Opeth’s The Last Will and Testament from last year. The key difference, however, is that The Reticent does not shy away from placing their inner demons on full display. This is best exemplified by the unexpected foray into dissonant death metal territory on “The Bed of Wasps (Those Consumed with Panic)”, which is unquestionably the heaviest material The Reticent has written to date (even more so than “Stage 5: The Nightmare” from The Oubliette).
The Reticent expertly employs many musical methods throughout please to reflect the myriad forms of mental illness. James Nelson’s and Paul McBride’s cascading guitar and bass lines in “The Night River (Those Who Can’t Rest),” along with Hathcock’s flowing tom rolls, are like the intricate web of thoughts that an insomniac’s mind might spin. The aforementioned dissonant flurry of “The Bed of Wasps (Those Consumed with Panic)” is the sonic equivalent of an anxiety attack, with constant time signature changes and tormented vocals. “The Riptide (Those Without Hope)” floats by at a despondent, languid pace, the singing soaked with depressive acceptance. It’s ironic and heartbreaking that “The Chance (Those Who Let Go)” is the most hopeful and uplifting in tone, given that it’s about an individual resolved to suicide. The previously calm drumming becomes desperate and frantic at the very end before abruptly cutting off as if a trigger had been pulled.
Although please is musically as good or better than The Reticent’s usual standards, it’s impaired by a greater dependence on narration. “Diagnosis 1” and “Diagnosis 2” are irksome interruptions that take up five minutes in total, describing the symptoms of anxiety and major depressive disorder. I can see the justification for “Intake,” which briefly lays out some suicide statistics and leads into the first proper song, and “Discharge,” which reflects on the aftermath of suicide via a recording of a woman whose husband took his own life, but both tracks should have been shortened. To make matters worse, some of the proper songs contain their own narrative segments as well. please is at its most powerful when the simple yet piercing lyrics are allowed to speak for themselves as opposed to shoehorning clinical informative tidbits.
please is not exactly a fun experience, but its message is an important one. It’s an unequivocal declaration that mental illness is very real, millions of people live with it, and many ultimately make the horrific choice not to. The Reticent does an excellent job of bringing this issue to life with thoughtfully crafted music. If the heavy-handed narrative elements had been pared back in exchange for one more quality song, the score below would easily have been half a point higher or more. Notwithstanding, please is a crucial reminder that we don’t know what unseen struggles others might experience. Always be kind; it can make all the difference.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 10 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Generation Prog Records
Websites: Bandcamp | Official | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: November 13th, 2025
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Wed Nov 12 12:20:52 GMT 2025