Imagine a high-speed bullet train in the throes of a 275 mph run as it suddenly makes a sharp turn without a single second to slow down. That’s the sound of SUICIDE SILENCE.
It’s not so much the noise from Japan’s famous Shinkansen trains that’s analogous with the Southern California heavy metal institution, a band that has both defined and defied subgenre classifications over the course of five incredible albums and countless international tours. No, what SUICIDE SILENCE has in common with the bullet train is the breakneck intensity, the fearless acceleration, and the no-nonsense efficiency.
The tight-knit band’s mash-up of death metal, grind, and time-signature bending dissonance with structured, focused, and undeniable grooves unquestionably shaped and led the emerging “Deathcore” subgenre from the arrival of their 2007 debut, »The Cleansing«. SUICIDE SILENCE was named “Best New Talent” at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards and had already dominated the Rockstar Mayhem touring festival by the time 2009’s »No Time To Bleed« broke into the Billboard Top 40. 'Wake Up' and 'Lifted' became underground classics, as SUICIDE SILENCE transcended the subgenre they helped define and became peers with bands they’d grown up listening to as kids in California.
Produced by Steve Evetts (THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, EVERY TIME I DIE, SEPULTURA) and mixed by Zeuss (ROB ZOMBIE, QUEENSRYCHE, HATEBREED), 2011’s »The Black Crown« was the full realization of everything SUICIDE SILENCE stood for and vehemently stood against.
Suddenly, the man who popularized the 'You Only Live Once' phrase in the heavy music community left the world behind unexpectedly and much too soon to fathom. Mitch Lucker was killed in a motorcycle accident on Halloween Night, 2012. Two months later, SUICIDE SILENCE took the stage without Mitch for the first time, playing an emotional and career-spanning set in memorial to their late singer, with Eddie Hermida and frontmen from bands like MUDVAYNE, LAMB OF GOD, and MACHINE HEAD. An understanding and supportive audience responded enthusiastically to the October 2013 announcement that SUICIDE SILENCE would officially continue with Hermida, the only man considered for the job.
2014’s album »You Can’t Stop Me« served as a simultaneous introduction to Hermida, as well as a celebration of the brotherhood the band shared with his late predecessor. SUICIDE SILENCE fans demonstrated their fierce loyalty and unwavering support when album number four emerged, putting it in the Billboard 200’s Top 20. The industry followed suit; Sirius XM’s Liquid Metal played it more than any other album in 2014.
As evidenced most defiantly and definitively with the self-titled fifth album by SUICIDE SILENCE, the best in music, literature and all creative arts is born from pain, birthed in truth, drawn from harrowing life experience. It mines the inner depths of the soul to snatch authentic beauty from the jaws of an otherwise certain death. Plenty of heavy bands pay lip service to the idea of overcoming the odds, persevering through adversity, and finding strength from within, but few live it as triumphantly as SUICIDE SILENCE.
