Suicide Silence, etc. frontman Eddie Hermida was interviewed recently by Metal Wani and spoke of the mixed reaction to the band’s new single, “Doris“. That track introduced the group’s new penchant for clean vocals, which Care expected to be quite prevalent throughout the band’s forthcoming self-titled new album. Their introduction has led to considerable outcry. As of press time that aforementioned video currently sits at 11,763 likes and 19,499 dislikes on YouTube. Speaking of the reaction to the track, he offered:
“I think that the big issue with the deathcore fans is that they’re so trained to listen to really, really polished music, really, really sterile music…”
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He continued:
“The fact is, A: The music industry is suffering—it’s a really known fact. CD sales just don’t happen anymore. People can download the music for free wherever they can find it if they are willing enough to look.
Or they just can stream it from some streaming service they have on their phone. And while streaming services are forking over some of their profits, they’re not really giving musicians their due take, you know what I mean? It’s not a very fair world.
So us musicians, we just don’t have the resources to spend a $100,000 on a record. Those days are long gone. The days of people actually going out and purchasing music because that was the only way of finding music—they’re gone now. It’s become so easy that it makes it difficult for us as musicians to express ourselves in a way that isn’t quantized and replaced by cheap sounds.
Now that being said I’m not trying to throw shade on any recording methods. I think that if you have something to express and the only way you see fit is to do it in this manner, that’s cool. But you have to, as a musician, get to a point where the replaced sounds and reamped guitars and solid state amplifiers and punched-in vocals just don’t really hit the mark anymore.
The biggest thing is when we stepped into the studio to record this record is we wanted to create real sounds. And that reality and that power that comes with true noise, it isn’t something that this fanbase is trained for. It’s not something they’re used to.
So obviously the reaction is going to be very odd and off-putting, it’s not going to be something that people are going to listen to right away and get. We knew that going in, we expected that. So the reaction for us isn’t really out of pocket. It’s pretty much exactly what we wanted—if anything it’s a little bit more than we expected, and that’s a beautiful thing.”
When asked what motivated the decision to change the band’s sound:
“When it comes down to it this was the record where we felt like if we made any decision based on ‘we should keep this traditional,’ ‘we should totally seek approval of fans’—just by doing something that we are used to doing—it would have been a regression in ourselves.
It would have been something based in fear and that’s something that we wanted to avoid. It was something we knew that if we sat on our hinds at all that this band would fall apart. It’s not what we’re here to do, we’re here to challenge ourselves every single day—and by ourselves, I also mean our fans. So that’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to awaken ears, we’re hear to awaken minds.”
He also spoke of working with producer Ross Robinson (Korn, Slipknot) on the effort, describing it as “two months of hell” due to how introspective the process was and how deep he was forced to look into himself during the sessions. Later he mentioned that he see’s the majority of the band’s fans as being willing to embrace the changes the group have made to their sound:
“I think that most of the fans are down for the change. I think most of them are not really that big of deathcore fans to be honest. I think that, from what I’ve seen on the internet, the numbers of deathcore fans are very minimal compared to people who actually listen to music all the time.
Deathcore fans are great and I owe a lot to them but at the same time I am also searching for… my own place of gratitude, I want to make myself a fan, you know? Honestly, continuously giving to the deathcore fanbase is something that I’ve already done.
With All Shall Perish and Suicide Silence I’ve given plenty and it’s time for me to be a little selfish. I want to explore music and I want to create things that are going to make me happy in the long run.
I know everybody’s attempting to do that but I think that the fearlessness that I am experiencing is something that not a lot of people are willing to go through. You have to kind of give up on yourself in order to become that 15-year-old kid that was writing music for the first time.
I think a lot of the deathcore/Suicide Silence fanbase, I think a lot of ’em are either going to be pleasantly surprised or completely disgusted.”
The interviewer also brought up Carnifex frontman Scott Ian Lewis‘ thoughts on deathcore, in which Lewis went on to say that Suicide Silence, Whitechapel and his own band were the last of the original deathcore wave still standing. The interviewer posited that Lewis was suggesting that other deathcore bands had branched out and “explored different areas.” Hermida offered:
“Absolutely not, I don’t know what he’s talking about. As much as he’s trying to be respectful or whatever you want to call it, it’s a pretty flagrant statement. I think if anything exploring outside of the deathcore sound is more deathcore than any deathcore band claims to be.
Deathcore started because we were not trying to be a traditional death metal band and not trying to be traditional punk rock/hardcore band. We’re trying to explore the groove and the hip hop and the breakdown and the correlation between death metal and gangsta rap.
That to me is deathcore. So, to sit there and say that, I think he’s just trying to get attention and press and that’s cool. I don’t disagree with Scott in saying that Carnifex is a deathcore band.
But to sit there and say that they’re the only ones holding it down, it’s kind of like Thy Art Is Murder saying ‘let’s make deathcore great again’ and then putting out a song that sounds exactly like their last record. It’s just kind of negating the whole thing, its lost its way.”
For more on the recording process and the band’s future plans, check out the interview itself below. “Suicide Silence” will be in stores on February 24th.
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