Suicide Silence Vocalist Opens Up on “Severe” Backlash Against Self-Titled Album
Cold Lake. Illud Divinum Insanus. Suicide Silence.
Suicide Silence found themselves in rare company with their 2017 self-titled affair, wholly rejected by fans. And for those who think the band could let all that criticism roll right off their shoulders… seriously? Of course it’s gonna drag them down. Even worse, the band got out on the road after its release and saw attendance figures dwindle.
Frontman Eddie Hermida opened up on the band’s internal reaction to that backlash in a new chat with Louder Sound:
“We took a lot of heat for the last album and the backlash was much more severe than we thought it would be. That definitely affected us personally. You can’t just shrug this shit off and go, ‘OK, this is just the breeze in the sky. Whatever.’ No, it’s not ‘whatever.’ This is our livelihood and our art. It’s everything we’ve poured our soul and heart into. So, yeah, some of that negativity affected us but it affected us in a way that gave us trajectory and fueled the new record [2020’s ‘Become the Hunter‘].
“It became very apparent, after we did the first record with Eddie [2014’s You Can’t Stop Me], that the foundation we built with Mitch [Lucker] was no longer stable enough for us to remain standing if we kept going that way. We knew we needed to start over and we were willing to do whatever it took to accomplish that no matter the cost. We realized we needed to change right away if we wanted to be around later.”
What I find so interesting about this quote is that Eddie hedges a bit, essentially saying “Yeah, it fucking sucked, and it hurt, but it needed to happen.” I dig that: I think it’s strong not to back down from the creative statement that was Suicide Silence, a record, by the way, that MetalSucks liked (we were some of the only ones).
Suicide Silence had planned to go out on the road this spring opening for Jinjer, a band that wasn’t even on the map when their last record came out. Accepting that opening slot necessitated swallowing their pride, but I’m glad they saw and understood the importance of doing it. It’s a shame the tour never happened, like everything else this spring, so I’m not sure where that leaves Suicide Silence going forward. But it seems like fans mostly dug Become the Hunter, so that’s a positive step forward for the band.
[via Ultimate Guitar]
