Suicide Silence

Suicide Silence first surfaced in 2007 as an American deathcore outfit that folded black metal, grindcore, mathcore, and groove metal textures into its attack. Their punishing debut full-length, The Cleansing, set the template, after which later releases continued to draw explicit inspiration from Sepultura, Cannibal Corpse, Death, and Possessed. The group’s self-titled fifth studio album, issued in 2017, introduced clean, nu-metal-inflected vocals, whereas 2020’s Become the Hunter and 2023’s Remember… You Must Die restored the unyielding deathcore approach of the band’s initial phase.

Formed in Riverside, California in 2002, the quintet secured a Century Media contract within two years despite several early personnel shifts. Prior to that major-label step, they issued the independent EP titled Suicide Silence through At the Deep End and SOS Records.

The Cleansing arrived in September 2007 under the guidance of producer John Travis. It cracked the Billboard Top 100, becoming one of Century Media’s strongest commercial performers to date. In its wake the band toured extensively across the United States and Europe alongside Parkway Drive and Bury Your Dead. Vocalist Mitch Lucker, guitarists Chris Garza and Mark Heylmun, bassist Mike Bodkins (later replaced by Dan Kenny), and drummer Alex Lopez marked 2008 by joining the summer edition of the Mayhem Metal Festival.

No Time to Bleed reached the Top 40 of the album charts in 2009 and drew favorable notices. The Black Crown, the third album, pivoted from anti-religious subject matter to personal themes supplied by lyricist Mitch Lucker and achieved the band’s highest chart placement. Lucker died in November 2012 from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident. A memorial concert held later that year featured Suicide Silence performing each song with a different guest vocalist; by autumn 2013 the group had recruited Hernan “Eddie” Hermida, formerly of All Shall Perish, as permanent frontman. The concert was documented and released in early 2014 as Ending Is the Beginning: The Mitch Lucker Memorial Show 12.21.12.

The 2017 self-titled fifth album marked a deliberate move toward melody and nu-metal dynamics. For the sixth album, Become the Hunter, the band enlisted producer Steve Evetts—known for work with The Dillinger Escape Plan, Sepultura, and Hatebreed—while scaling back clean singing to reclaim their extreme-metal foundation. The same uncompromising modern deathcore stance defined 2023’s Remember… You Must Die, whose cover art was created by Necrosurrealist painter David Van Gough.