The Suicide Silence guitarist opens up about the death of Mitch Lucker, getting the band back together, and their badass new record You Can’t Stop Me.
“We didn’t really know what we were going to do. The memorial show could have been the last show we would do as Suicide Silence,” says the band’s lead guitarist, Mark Heylmun – of course, referring to the passing of Suicide Silence’s original vocalist Mitch Lucker, following a motorcycle accident on Halloween of 2012 and the star-studded memorial show held in his honor.
“We didn’t really have a definitive idea of whether we wanted to keep going or not,” Heylmun continues, “It was something we really had to work out,” he says, and in the initial days following Lucker’s passing, it was far from the forefront of the band’s collective mind(s).”
Lucker and Heylmun.
Of course, now it’s half-way through 2014 and things are well and truly underway again in the Suicide Silence camp, with the impending release of their fourth album – the first without Lucker – with (now) ex-All Shall Perish vocalist Eddie Hermida.
“We hit him up to come do a song, to see what he would sound like,” tells Heylmun of Hermida’s recruitment. “It was pretty fucking awesome!” he exclaims, perhaps a tad over-zealously, but understandably so.
“Then, once we’d heard what he sounded like, we asked him if he wanted to record a record with us,” Heylmun says, going on, “We approached him, but he definitely disn’t say “yes” right away. He definitely thought about it for a while.” Although, Hermida wasn’t the only one who took his time considering a future with Suicide Silence.
The newly Hermida-fronted Suicide Silence.
“When Mitch passed, the first real thing we wanted to do was something for him,” agrees Heylmun, telling of the dark days immediately following Lucker’s death, “It was such a fucking bummer; establishing the Kenadee fund and the memorial show – doing anything we could do for him. We were just so shocked. It was fucking brutal.”1
“When we got done with the memorial show, and had time off – time to just cruise and do our own thing – eventually, all the guys in the band, we all made the decision that we wanted to keep going and get back out there and do it for ourselves and do it for Mitch,” says Heylmun, seeing the move as a further tribute to their fallen comrade. “He wouldn’t have wanted Suicide Silence to die; he would have wanted us to keep going and fucking kick ass and do the best we possibly could,” he adds.
If You Can’t Stop Me is anything to go by, then the band have surely paid adequate tribute to Lucker. “This record is a banger. I’m really excited to put it out. Putting it together was such a fun experience along with being back together with everyone,” says Heylmun.
“We haven’t really changed the formula. We just plug out guitars into our amps and begin, and we play,” details Heylmun (rather bluntly) of the new records construction. “That’s how the record got written. There wasn’t really a different approach, or anything other than wanting to write the best songs possible and cover as much of our vast influences,” he says, telling of a band sticking to their guns.
However, the moment you hear You Can’t Stop Me, it’s clear that something – besides the obvious – is different. Ironically, this album shows the band at their most vital sounding. Its songs are sharper, heavier and more involved than anything Suicide Silence have put out to date (more on that over at the official review), and it’s a distinction most perceptible in the guitar work of Heylmun and his seven-stringed partner in crime, Chris Garza.
“We were really feeling it,” Heylmun responds when quizzed about You Can’t Stop Me’s vivacious dynamic. “I feel like, every record we’ve done, we learn a little bit more about how write Suicide Silence songs. We’re always doing new things but we’re still trying to keep it brutal and keep it sounding like us,” he elaborates.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBVdDVEZ4zs]
Mission: accomplished.
Of the seemingly greater death metal influence present on You Can’t stop Me, Heylmun explains, “The band listens to a lot of different music. Our bass player (Dan kenney) is into like super, super death metal; he’s always listening to just brutal, extreme shit; and our drummer (Alex Lopez) listens to everything from Fantomas and stuff that’s heavy to electronic stuff that’s really weird.”
Although Heylmun’s final stance is that the intensity of You Can’t Stop Me comes from a refinement of elements already present rather than any new addition. “When we get together and we play together, we like to explore everyone’s influences. I wouldn’t say there’s anything different (this time) we just learned a little bit more about how to work together,” he declares.
“We’re always listening to the same kind of stuff – listening to the classic stuff; like Metallica; maybe some Morbid Angel in there; Pantera;” Heylmun goes on, further rejecting the contention of some sort of new, musical element present in You Can’t Stop Me. “We’re just kind of doing our own jam. Whatever comes out comes out, and that’s what we’re playing,” he concludes.
“Eddie got the ball really rolling,” Heylmun goes on about how Suicide Silence embraced Hermida and the ease with which You Can’t Stop Me came together, continuing, “We could write six songs in a week and they were badass. Once we heard how he (Hermida) was going to write how he was going to sound, it was badass; it was so great.”
“We were really diligent, we had a bunch of songs that we’d worked out and we were still toying around with jams. In the first week, when Eddie came down and got involved, he were doing stuff we’d never done before and it really just set the bar,” Heylmun says, adding that, “Eddie was with the band the entire time, and that’s the only way we would have done it.
Suicide Silence with Lucker.
For all Hermida’s influence however, You Can’t Stop Me still acknowledges and continues the legacy of Lucker, with the album’s defiant title being drawn from a set of lyrics the late frontman left behind.
““You Can’t Stop Me” was a song we wrote back in 2012, prior to when we started jamming in August of 2013, which is when we got together and started jamming and writing all the songs for the record,” Heylmun explains. “We had written two songs , musically, and Mitch had come while we were tracking the guitar so he could get a basic idea of what the songs sounded like,” he continues.
“Then (after Lucker’s death) there was this one set of lyrics that we found – called “You Can’t Stop Me” and there’s only one of the songs that it could have been; It was obvious which song it was because of the way the vocals fit. So we adapted it to the song that we could tell was the one that he was writing for.”
“It was really weird. We didn’t know what those lyrics were or the song-title or anything like that, until about when we decided to go on and had started writing,” Heylmun responds to the song’s obviously confronting message, one made all the more prominent by its singularity – “There’s (only) one song called “You Can’t Stop Me;” that’s all he had written at that point; from when we had started writing for the record,” Heylmun confirms.
The “Unstoppable” Lucker.
Those familiar with the circumstances of Lucker’s death might find the song’s celebration of being “reckless” a touch unsettling, but Heylmun’s quick to dismiss the notion. “The song’s not about being invincible,” he says, “We weren’t taking it in a literal way. Obviosly you aren’t invincible; obviously crashing his motorcycle can stop him (Lucker. Obviously).”2
“At that point it sounded like an empowering message to us,” Heylmun reiterates, “We had just gotten back together, all in the one room, and we were reading these lyrics that Mitch had written, called “You can’t Stop Me.” It was the first time we were like, “Holy shit, this is actually happening.”
Either way, You Can’t Stop Me marks one of the most triumphant returns for a band in the history of metal. “I’m just really excited to play and have you guys hear it,” Heylmun agrees, “And hopefully this record won’t be the last.”
You Can’t Stop Me comes out July 11-15,3 courtesy of Nuclear Blast. In the meantime you can read the review of the album and/or donate to the Kenadee Lucker Education Fund.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E94kFeoPdmw]
1 Perhaps the most accurate use of the word (i.e. “brutal”) by a metal musician in some time.
2 Heylmun’s response here sidesteps the actual question, which pertained to the glorification of acting recklessly rather than the ironic notion of “being stopped.” However, one doesn’t tend to press someone about whether they’re being properly respectful of their dead friend and his surviving family, neither of which party the interviewer had any relationship with or to other than that false, one-way sense of entitled understanding that comes pre-packaged with notions of celebrity. And otherwise, at some point one also has to extend some sense of personal responsibility to the band’s fans, however young and impressionable they may be. And so I will say nothing further on the matter other than to defer to what Lucker’s wife had to say following his death:
“I was in front of him begging him not to leave the house. …And he did… and he’s gonna miss out on watching Kenadee grow because he decided to drink and drive. Just don’t, just think before you guys do something stupid, please learn from it. Please.”
3 Geographically dependent.
