Suicide Silence: Eddie Hermida’s Vocals Replaced in Devil May Cry 5

The creators of Devil May Cry 5 have come up with a resolution to the controversy surrounding the inclusion of a Suicide Silence song in their game — and it’s a bittersweet one for fans of the deathcore outfit.

The band, you may recall, was slotted to have a track called “Subhuman,” co-written with the DMC5‘s composer, Cody Matthew Johnson, included in the game as the battle theme for the game’s protagonist, Dante. In fact, they even went so far as to make and release a music video for the song.

But after debuting the song and video yesterday at the Tokyo Game Show earlier this year, it came to the attention of the game’s producers, Capcom, that Suicide Silence vocalist Eddie Hermida was accused of sexual misconduct in 2017. That led to Capcom pulling the video and releasing the following statement:

“The music was recorded for the game before the incident [involving Hermida] came to light and we were unaware of the incident until now. However, as we are now aware of the current situation, Capcom has decided that moving forward, we will not further highlight the Dante battle theme for promotional purposes at this time. We are also currently evaluating what options are possible for the full game at this point, which is dependent on various factors such as resources.”

Now Game Informer reports that “Subhuman” will remain in DMC5… albeit with Hermida’s parts re-recored by former Volumes frontman Michael Barr. The remaining members of Suicide Silence — guitarists Mark Heylmun and Chris Garza, drummer Alex Lopez, and bassist Dan Kenny — will remain on the track.

Capcom’s Yuri Araujo made the announcement in a blog post earlier today:

“While the song was written and recorded in-game well before such allegations, we’d still like to ensure, to the best of our abilities, that your experience with the game ultimately goes unmarred. As such, our development team, producers, recording and mixing teams have worked hard to find and implement a new vocal track by Michael Barr.

“It is worth noting that the hard work of the Suicide Silence band members, as well as song writers Cody Matthew Johnson & Mark Heylmun, remained intact, as they were not involved with the incidents. As you hear the new track in new promotional materials and in-game, please expect the instrumental parts to sound the same as before. In-game credits have also been updated to properly reflect the new recording.”

Game Informer goes to postulate why Hermida got the boot while his bandmates did not:

“One of the reasons this might have been such a difficult replacement is the way DMC5 uses its battle music, layering it depending on how the style rankings in battles fluctuate. Replacing just the vocal track was likely a more feasible option for how the music was implemented into the game than making an entirely new track.”

DMC5 is considered one one of 2019’s most anticipated video games, and we can assume that Capcom expect to make crazy bank on the title… so it’s not at all surprising that they’ve chosen to distance themselves from Hermida. And, presumably, Suicide Silence were consulted on who would re-record Hermida’s parts, and approve of Barr.

The question, then, is what, if anything, this means for Hermida’s future with Suicide Silence. On the one hand, no band wants to be on their third vocalist. On the other hand, no band wants to potentially miss out on big opportunities like this due to negative PR. So it will be interesting to see how the band responds to all of this drama.

Thanks: Jacob B.