Suicide Silence: Tenacity Is Key
Ask anyone to list the biggest bands to come out of the 2000s deathcore scene and there is no doubt that Suicide Silence will be amongst the names you are given. They have been a constant in the industry ever since their emergence and are determined to carry on this trend, refusing to go unnoticed, with the release of their crushing new album Remember… You Must Die. We caught up with guitarist Mark Heylmun to discuss exactly what has kept Suicide Silence moving forward.
“I read a poem that was in Latin, and I read a translation of it, and it was a poem about death and our relationship with death. The way that Latin phrasing translates to English is so cool and brutal sounding that I just went super hard into that and started looking up all kinds of different ways to translate things into English. And it kind of became this whole, you know, the relationship of life and death. We keep it far away from ourselves. It’s so close to us and it’s such a part of us. We fear it, but at the same time, if we just had a healthy relationship with it, it would probably make our lives better. Remember you must die is memento mori, more or less translated.”
While a standard theme of the deathcore genre is heaviness in general, this is something that Heylmun and the rest of the band wanted to push to the edge of its boundary. “The music always comes first for me and like as far as writing concepts, that kind of comes a little bit after. Musically, we were going back to we call it ‘heavy as possible’. It was coined by [Chris] Garza, our other guitar player, and it’s H.A.P – it was the name of our group chat, when we’re writing music and writing songs and ideas. It’s like, is it hot? Is it heavy as possible? Can it be heavier?” He explains. “It’s so easy with heavy metal and like our styles of music to get so sad or depressing with the music or, in musical terms, really rely on like the minor sound. There are tons of bands that have done great major stuff that sounds really cool. But for us you don’t wanna be pirate jigging and having it sound too positive. It’s hard to merge that like, brutal and angry, but still have the Hatebreed in it where you’re telling people that it’s like it’s all good and ‘get your shit done’.”
When speaking about Suicide Silence, there will always be one topic on the back of your mind. In 2012 the band dealt with the extremely unfortunate, untimely, and sudden passing of then-vocalist Mitch Lucker. He helped to define an entire generation of musicians, leaving behind a legacy that would be hard to follow. Heylmun explains just how the band came together and how various member changes over the years has impacted their outlook.
“I don’t think that there was much of another option [of carrying on after Mitch’s passing]. It’s not something to brag or boast about, but it’s like none of us really had any like, job ambitions – most of us graduated from high school, but none of us went to college. Some of us didn’t graduate from high school. We’ve been doing this since we were really young, so that’s why it’s not something to brag or boast about, but we just never really had much else that we wanted to do. So, what else are we gonna do other than keep this going, and do this as much as we can? Like, sure members might change or whatever it may, but I don’t think the band will ever really go away. I don’t think anyone really wants it to like fully just stop. ‘Cuz it’s been going long enough that why not just keep it going forever?” He stops to think for a short second. “I mean, we’ve gone through so much shit, and we talk about it. It’s like the band is cursed; let’s just ride the curse. That’s one way of looking at it, I guess. That’s something positive. There’s tons of bands out there that don’t have it as good as we have, even though we’ve had it bad.”
“I’ve been asked before, ‘where do you see the band if Mitch wouldn’t have passed?’ or whatever. It’s not like I won’t answer, I don’t answer that question. Not out of disrespect, but I don’t answer that. I deal in realities. I don’t really think about what could have been because there’s no healthy way of thinking about what could have been in a situation that can’t be. So, when you’re moving forward with something or working on something, deal in reality and logic and what’s really going on. That’s probably going to be your most healthy way to deal with anything. You can’t lie to yourself. You can’t lie to people, and you can’t come to something without full honesty. It spans many, many industries. But honesty is what I think fuels pretty much any good business or good venture, whatever it is. It has to come from an honest place. It has to be real. And if it’s not authentic, people see through.”
As a band that has grown with the ever-increasing deathcore scene, Suicide Silence are constantly finding themselves on both sides of the spectrum, both as influencers and influencees. After nearly 20 years in the industry as a member of Suicide Silence, Heylmun has a simple piece of advice to give to anyone wishing to follow in their footsteps. “If you’re doing it (writing music), you have to be doing this for your true, authentic reasons and have passion. It’s like yeah, you want to write music, but you have to need to do it to exist. It goes beyond wanting. Like, if I just wanted to write music, I would quit this band and not have done all this; all the bullshit that we’ve gone through and everything that’s ever happened to us. I would’ve quit and wrote songs by myself in my room and put them out online and had people listen to it. ‘Cause you could do that, you know?” He pauses slightly again. “But if it’s, if it’s in your fucking DNA that you have to write these songs, you have to put them out, you have to get like the album put out, you have to go on tour, you have to play at that show, you have to meet that person, you have to do this, all the shit that comes with it. You have to need it. The industry will fucking chew you up and spit you out if you’re just out there.”
