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Suicide Silence are an American deathcore band from California that formed in 2002.
The band started out with two vocalists, but one of them (Tanner Womack) got fired after the band's debut performance in 2003, leaving only Mitch Lucker, who would stick with the band through their rise to fame. After a few demo releases, they recorded their self-titled EP, and afterwards decided that it would stick as a main band and not originally as a side project. After some lineup changes, they signed onto Century Media to record their debut album The Cleansing, which performed well commercially upon its 2007 release and enabled them to take part in the Mayhem Festival 2008.
After the releases of their second and third albums, No Time to Bleed and The Black Crown, the band signed to the label Nuclear Blast. However, their trajectory would forever be altered on November 1, 2012, when Lucker died from severe injuries sustained from a motorcycle accident. The band held a memorial show on December 21 to help support the future education costs of Lucker's daughter Kenadee (who was 5 at the time of his death), with a fund being started in her name that still exists and promotes donations today.
After almost a year of inactivity, it was announced in October 2013 through the band's Facebook page that they would be continuing with Hernan "Eddie" Hermida of All Shall Perish hired as their new vocalist. Their next releases were 2014's You Can't Stop Me, named after a song Lucker wrote before his death, and their self-titled fifth album in 2017, which unveiled a stylistic shift from deathcore to a more melodic sound reminiscent of nu metal. This shift divided critics and was met with negativity from the majority of the band's fans, and the album also sold considerably less than You Can't Stop Me.
In 2018, it was revealed that near the end of 2017, Hermida was involved in a sexual harassment scandal. Amid the fallout from the resulting PR fiasco, a song the band had made for Devil May Cry 5 titled "Subhuman" had its music video and every appearance in trailers following the news removed by Capcom themselves. They later announced that they did not know about the scandal until after the song's completion, and opted to re-record Hermida's vocals with Michael Barr instead.
In early 2022, the band announced that they would return to Century Media, where they released their first three albums, and longtime drummer Alex Lopez had departed the band. Ernie Iniguez, who had recorded drums on the band's sixth album, Become the Hunter, was announced as his live replacement for any upcoming tours. In June of that year, the band announced their seventh studio album, Remember... You Must Die, which was released in March 2023.
Members:
- Chris Garza – rhythm guitar (2002–present)
- Mark Heylmun – lead guitar (2005–present)
- Dan Kenny – bass (2008–present)
- Hernan "Eddie" Hermida - vocals (2013-present)
- Ernie Iniguez - drums (2022-present)
Past Members:
- Mitch Lucker – lead vocals (2002–2012; died 2012)
- Mike Bodkins – bass, backing vocals (2002-2008)
- Josh Goddard - drums (2002-2006)
- Rick Ash – lead guitar (2002-2005)
- Tanner Womack – lead vocals (2002)
- Alex Lopez - drums (2006-2022)
Discography:
- Death Awaits (2003) (demo)
- Family Guy Demo (2004)
- Suicide Silence (2005) (EP)
- Demo 2006
- The Cleansing (2007)
- No Time to Bleed (2009)
- The Black Crown (2011)
- Ending Is the Beginning: The Mitch Lucker Memorial Show (2014) (live video)
- You Can't Stop Me (2014)
- Sacred Words (2015) (EP)
- Suicide Silence (2017)
- Rare Ass Shit (2019) (compilation, includes self-titled EP and The Cleansing pre-production demos)
- Live and Mental (2019) (live album)
- Become the Hunter (2020)
- "Overlord" (2020) (single, B-side from Become the Hunter)
- Thinking in Tongues (single, 2022)
- Remember... You Must Die (2023)
FOR ALL THE TROPES THAT GO UNANSWERED! WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS!?:
- The Alcoholic: Breaking edge did not do good things for Mitch Lucker, and by his wife's own admission, he was an out-of-control alcoholic by the time of his death.
- The Anti-Nihilist: Most of the band's more philosophical songs take this meaning, particularly "Fuck Everything" and "You Only Live Once".
- Ascended Extra: Hernan "Eddie" Hermida was a longtime friend of the band who started off as one of the guests at the memorial show, and was eventually selected as the new vocalist, while Ernie Iniguez was a live fill-in for the band before he eventually took Alex's place.
- Audience Participation Song:
- "Unanswered": "WHERE IS YOUR GOD!? WHERE IS YOUR GOD!? WHERE IS YOUR FUCKING GOD!?"
- "No Pity for a Coward": "SECONDS FROM THE END! WHAT'S IT GONNA BE!? PULL THE TRIGGER BITCH!"
- "Bludgeoned to Death": "AND DOCTORS WON'T BE ABLE TO RECOGNIZE YOUR FUCKING FACE!"
- "Wake Up: "WAKE UP, WAKE UP! THIS IS NO HALLUCINATION!"
- "Disengage": Traditionally starts with a wall of death.
- "You Only Live Once": "LIVE! LIFE! HARD!"
- "Fuck Everything": "FUCK EVERYTHING!", and people typically raise middle fingers to "PUT YOUR FINGERS IN THE FUCKING AIR, AND LIVE YOUR LIFE WITHOUT A CARE!".
- Bludgeoned to Death: Though not the Trope Namer, they have the appropiately titled song "Bludgeoned to Death".
- Cover Version: "Engine No. 9" by Deftones, "Them Bones" by Alice in Chains, "Superbeast" by Rob Zombie, "Last Breath" by Hatebreed, "Blind" by Korn, and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana (though the last two have only been covered live).
- Deathcore: Along with All Shall Perish, Despised Icon, and Whitechapel (Band), they became the poster children of the genre once it had established itself around the late 2000s. Furthermore, while it is debatable whether they truly created nu-deathcore (Emmure started mixing in nu metal elements around the same time, while Winds of Plague also had some burgeoning nu influence on Decimate the Weak), No Time to Bleed and especially The Black Crown were most certainly Trope Codifiers for the style.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The demos and the self-titled EP were far more heavily death metal-influenced, with quite a bit of riffing that wasn't entirely removed from the early 2000s California Bay Area technical/brutal death style (and were written well before Dan Kenny, who had been part of that scene when he was in Carnivorous, was even in the picture). Even The Cleansing, while decidedly a deathcore album, was still more rooted in death metal than anything that followed (especially since it had several of their earliest songs).
- I Am the Band: Chris Garza, as of Mitch's death.
- In Spite of a Nail: Even if Mitch had lived, they would have still made the self-titled and switched to nu metal; The Black Crown made it very apparent that they were heading in that direction, and Mitch was working with a vocal coach shortly before his death to expand into cleans; furthermore, Chris Garza stated in an interview that had Mitch lived, the self-titled was going to be the followup to The Black Crown, and the only reason that You Can't Stop Me happened was because they needed to play it safe while they got back on their feet and settled into the new iteration of the band.
- Later-Installment Weirdness: The self-titled was a complete jump into nu metal; while they had had extremely overt nu metal elements for a while, they were still a deathcore act at the end of the day. The self-titled, on the other hand, had very few traces of their established style. They would return to deathcore with Become the Hunter, making this a
Creator's Oddball. - Metal Scream: Mitch was known for his extremely high Type 3s - which influenced many other deathcore vocalists to come, as well as his Type 2s. He had to shift the latter up to Type 1s up near his death to account for vocal deterioration.
- Music Is Politics: The (apparent) reason why Eddie Hermida was fired from All Shall Perish shortly after he joined Suicide Silence boiled down to this by way of onerous restrictions on his activities with All Shall Perish from Suicide Silence's management. In light of recent events involving Matt Kuykendall's lawsuit against Mike Tiner regarding rights to the All Shall Perish brand and royalties owed, however, it's entirely possible that there may have been another reason for this, as Eddie has since rejoined ASP with founding vocalist Craig Betit also returning on a presumably live basis (most likely akin to the setup that Frank Mullen and Ricky Myers have with Suffocation).
- New Sound Album:
- The Cleansing was standard hard-hitting deathcore with heavy breakdowns.
- No Time to Bleed introduced the atonal guitar solos that carried onto the next album, as well as being the start of their increasingly heavy dabblings in nu metal.
- The Black Crown took the Nu Metal elements that had started to manifest on No Time to Bleed and significantly expanded upon them, which was carried over to You Can't Stop Me.
- The self-titled is a Genre Shift to nu metal.
- Become the Hunter is a return to deathcore, with a noticeably more slam and brutal death-oriented style than most of their post-Cleansing output.
- Nice Guy: Lucker was credited as one, most noticeably, with the donation of $800 worth of toys to a variety Boys & Girls Club. Lucker was also known to be an energetic, well spoken, and genuinely kind person who simply wanted to live life as it was, although he did struggle with alcoholism after breaking straight edge, which unfortunately lead to his untimely passing.
- Nu Metal: Heavily influenced by this and were one of the first deathcore groups to mix the latter genre with it. The Black Crown, in particular, made it a central part of their sound, and tracks like "You Only Live Once", "Fuck Everything", and "Witness the Addiction" (the last one of which even featured Jonathan Davis) owed more to nu metal than to deathcore. The self-titled is a full jump into the style with very few traces of their original style, though Become the Hunter returned to their established deathcore style with a generally more death metal-leaning approach than is typical for their post-Cleansing output.
- Record Producer: For the band's self-titled album, the legendary Ross Robinson (aka "The Godfather of Nu Metal").
- Religion Rant Song: "Unanswered", "The Fallen", "In a Photograph" from The Cleansing, and "Something Invisible" from No Time To Bleed.
- Screams Like a Little Girl: Mitch Lucker was well known for his banshee-like screeching.
- Signature Style: Lots of time signature and tempo changes and slow but technical breakdowns, as well as atonal riffs and solos lacking in melody.
- Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter: "Unanswered".
- Soprano and Gravel: Have started using cleans as of the self-titled thanks to Eddie's greater range. Lucker apparently wanted to expand into them as well and was working with a vocal coach to effect this, but it obviously never materialized.
- Special Guest: Many during the memorial show on December 21, 2012. A rather lengthy list:note
- As for studio efforts, Frank Mullen of Suffocation, Johnathan Davis of Korn, and Alexia Rodriguez of Eyes Set to Kill on The Black Crown. George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher of Cannibal Corpse and Greg Puciato of The Dillinger Escape Plan showed up on You Can't Stop Me. Darius Tehrani of Spite was the sole guest on Become the Hunter.
- As of 2018, Mike Carrigan (Darkest Hour) is filling in for Mark Heylmun while the latter tends to family issues.
- Ernie Iniguez tracked drums on Become the Hunter and has handled live drums since 2021.
- Michael Barr (of the Volumes fame) lent his voice to Subhuman, after the controversy involving Eddie Hermida was brought to light and the song had to be re-recorded without his vocals.
- Vocal Decay: Even before he died, Mitch's voice was rapidly declining due to a mix of bad vocal technique, heavy substance usage, and physically intense live performances, all made much worse by their incredibly heavy touring schedule. By the time he died, Mitch was completely unable to do his lows and had shifted them up to mids live, while his highs had also been pitched down, and he usually could not make his way through a headlining set without regularly running out of breath and going off-key by the final quarter (or third on a bad night) of the set.
- Vocal Evolution: Up towards the end, Mitch shifted most of his lows up to mids, and his highs became somewhat less shrill. This was mostly due to vocal damage brought on by poor technique and heavy partying.
- Zombie Apocalypse: The music video for "Slaves to Substance".
