Every so often, an album comes along that doesn’t just sound brutal, it feels brutal. It clutches your chest, digs into your wounds, and drags something buried up to the surface. To Rid Myself of Truth by Signs of the Swarm is that album for me. It’s not just heavy; it’s alive with rage, suffering, and purpose. I can confidently say this is one of my favorite albums, not just of the year but of the genre. I absolutely love this record.
The band approached this release with a clear mantra: Be. More. Pissed. You can feel that fury in every crushing breakdown, every dissonant riff, every guttural scream. But beneath that anger lies something deeper: a thematic current of existential agony, spiritual betrayal, and the raw, unfiltered process of emotional collapse. This isn’t violence for the sake of brutality. This is personal. This is human.
David Simonich has taken this band to a completely new level since joining, and the evolution from Vital Deprivation to now has been intense and intentional. Every record since has stepped up in intensity and vision, but To Rid Myself of Truth is something else entirely. The songwriting is undeniably furious, but it’s also poetic.
Just looking at the singles alone, they set the tone for the overall theme of the album.
HELLMUSTFEARME, is a statement of identity forged through pain. It’s about becoming so twisted by trauma that even Hell itself wants no part of you. It explores transformation through suffering in the most visceral way. The repeated line “Hell must fear me” doesn’t feel like bragging. It sounds like a threat to every force that ever tried to break you. It’s a war cry for anyone who’s learned how to sharpen pain into power.
Clouded Retinas is another standout, a haunting journey into psychological deterioration. Featuring Will Ramos of Lorna Shore, the track delivers vivid imagery of blindness, spiritual numbness, and inner decay. The idea of not being able to see what’s real anymore, of losing grip on truth, is chilling. It’s the sound of a mind folding in on itself, trapped in delusion. You feel the weight of every lyric, every riff, and every scream.
Scars Upon Scars cuts deep. It’s emotional, raw, and strangely poetic in its hopelessness. When the line “Let me show you how I die” comes in, it doesn’t read like a cry for help. It feels like acceptance, like someone who has lived with their pain so long they’ve stopped running from it. There’s something powerful about that level of surrender, and the song captures it perfectly. The layered meaning behind “scars upon scars” shows just how much this album embraces suffering not as an obstacle, but as identity.
The album moves like a descent into personal hell, not the mythological kind but the one we build inside ourselves. Each track strips back another layer of the soul until there’s nothing left but honesty and exhaustion.
If I had to choose favorites—and that is genuinely difficult—I’d go with Natural Selection, Iron Sacrament (featuring Phil Bozeman of Whitechapel), and Clouded Retinas. But truthfully, there’s not a single track I would skip. The pacing, guest features, and lyrical depth are all executed with precision and care, without sacrificing intensity.
To Rid Myself of Truth is more than an album I enjoy. It’s an album I feel connected to. It reminds me that there is beauty in destruction, that anger can be made into something meaningful, and that sometimes the only way to heal is to face the fire and walk through it.
This isn’t just music. It’s catharsis. It’s survival. And it deserves to be heard.
