Silent Planet released Iridescent on November 12, 2021, through Solid State Records and UNFD. Their fourth studio album put vocalist Garrett Russell’s own experiences at the center of the writing. He described it to BrooklynVegan as the first Silent Planet record written primarily from his perspective, a shift that connected songs such as “Trilogy” and “Terminal” to events he had lived through.
“Trilogy” had arrived in February 2020, well before the full album. At its release, Russell said he had written it during a stay in a mental hospital, following events in which anxiety and depression had threatened the band’s future. He framed the song as a way of reconnecting with himself and reintroducing Silent Planet after that disruption.
The writing itself changed, too. In a 2023 conversation published by HEAVY Magazine, guitarist Mitchell Stark described “Trilogy” as a deliberate attempt to make the band’s structures, vocals and lyrics easier to follow. Producer Daniel Braunstein helped Russell reverse his usual process. Instead of arriving with completed lyrics and finding room for them, he tried wordless vocal sounds first, then wrote lines that fit the phrasing. That gave the words a defined space to work within. Russell called it an exercise in concision: “sometimes you do more with less.” Stark also credited the song with opening the band to more of the conventional metalcore audience.
For the album, Silent Planet paired heavy instrumentation with electronic elements and detailed sound design. The band entered the studio in summer 2020, developing a record concerned with grief, impermanence and love. Those themes ran through music that let Russell take on another practical challenge: playing guitar. “Terminal” was the first Silent Planet song to feature him on the instrument. In the band’s account of the album’s influences for BrooklynVegan, he described learning guitar ahead of its video shoot, with his bandmates encouraging him and helping him navigate the mistakes of a beginner.
That expanded role accompanied some difficult writing. Russell told Distorted Sound that “Terminal” drew on his hospital stay in 2019, particularly his experience of taking medication and feeling his perception change. The song expressed his uncertainty about whether medication alone could reach the hopelessness he felt. He wanted listeners to recognize something of their own experience in the music; connecting with someone who felt isolated mattered more to him than becoming the most popular band.
Turning inward didn’t remove the outside world from the record. “Alive, as a Housefire” grew from the Black Lives Matter protests Russell witnessed in Los Angeles. In the same interview, he connected its anger to his view of the justice system. The album could hold that public frustration alongside the private experiences driving “Terminal.”
Its title came from a smaller, deeply personal memory. Russell explained that he had seen an iridescent reflection in his puppy’s eyes. After the puppy died, that image became a way to understand love as something that changes without losing its value. “Iridescent” became the final track on the album.
