Suicide Silence Guitarist Talks Return to Form on New Album, “Experimentation” on Self-Titled
It’s important for bands to follow their musical instincts. However, when Suicide Silence experimented with their sound on their eponymous fifth studio album in 2017, fans were confused and upset.
In light of their new album, Become The Hunter, we spoke with guitarist Chris Garza on this week’s episode of The Metal Sucks Podcast. He shared with us how the writing process on the new album differed from that of the last, and explained the difficulty of keeping fans happy with a musical direction that’s a little bit different from album to album but not drastically so:
So, it’s the follow-up to that record you put out a couple years back — your self-titled record — that you guys are very proud of, and a lot of people did enjoy as well, but it was an experimentation. Ross Robinson was the guy that came in and got different music and sound out of you guys. Was this a return to form when you were writing this music, or is this just where it came?
“It’s just kind of where it came. It’s funny, if you talk to maybe another band member, you’d get a completely different answer. But it just happened that way. I view the band as a journey, and each record is part of the story. That record with Ross just ended up being experimentation really. When you’re constantly doing that, after you can’t stop me. It was very apparent that we needed to start all fuckin’ over. And we were willing to do that under all costs to make the future record be the best that it can be. In that point in our lives, we had to do that in order to write this record.”
Absolutely, but I think that that’s something about our genre that I love, but also it’s hard to break out of some parameters too fast. I think you gotta do a slow thing, you know? But taking the risk, and putting out aggressive music is the key. And, like I said, you guys have never stepped away from that. This wasn’t electronic pop music, where, I do understand, as a metalhead, from heavy metal to something like that, I understand how that’s jarring, but I do respect the artistry. If that’s where people are at, I don’t want them writing death metal songs. Does that make sense?
“Totally, yeah. It’s super tough. Every band is different. Some bands can evolve a little bit and that’s the way it’s supposed to be, some bands stay exactly the same, some bands take big risks. Every band is different. With us, it seems to be people want the Suicide Silence sound, but it can’t be the same exact thing we did prior. It’s like this weird middle ground that’s really fuckin’ hard to hit. It needs to be our sound that the fans love, but it also has to sound different. And that is super, super tough to do. The only thing you can do is be brutally honest, that’s since day one. That’s the only thing that we can do. And know how to get that, and that’s how it translates.”
Become The Hunter is out tomorrow, Friday, February 14..
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