Interview: Mark Heylmun of Suicide Silence

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with guitarist Mark Heylmun from Suicide Silence before their set at the Hard Rock in Orlando, FL. We talked touring, favorite concert experiences, and the “Sacred Words” EP. Suicide Silence are currently out on tour supporting Korn on their “Self Titled” anniversary tour through the remainder of this October. Check it out after the jump.
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Q – You guys are currently out on tour supporting Korn, how has it been treating you guys so far?

Mark – It’s hard to put it into words, you know? I don’t want to come off as a super fan, by any means. But Korn were definitely one of those bands when we were really young, it was that unbiased “we like this band”. We’re kids, and this is what we listen too. I mean, we’re doing interviews here and I can see Fieldy in the mirror there (laughs), it’s pretty fucking crazy

Q – It’s a fairly diverse lineup, I’d say. Do you personally prefer these sorts of tours, as apposed to being on a tour where every band is within the same genre?

Mark – I either like to be on the most “metal” bill, or the complete opposite. It’s not that I don’t like it otherwise, I just feel like there’s more room for it to be awesome. Like when we play Wacken Open Air or Brutal Assault festival, where it’s all this brutal black metal and death metal, it’s like “metal” metal, and we’;re kind of the sore thumb even on that. But then with tours like this, we’re this metal band on a package with Korn and Islander….which , it’s still a metal package, but we’re still sticking out with being a little more aggressive. I don’t know, I think it’s cool. I like being the band that we are, being on the fence. No matter where we are, we kinda just stick out.

Q – Now, i believe you came here years ago on tour opening for Megadeth…

Mark – Here, yep. This is the venue that got us kicked off that tour (laughs). Well not the venue, exactly, the security footage. Basically just a word to the wise, if you’re on tour opening for Megadeth, don’t sneak girls backstage. You’ll get in trouble. (laughs). But they’re a great band. I mean fuck it, we’ll never forget that experience. But this is the first time we’ve been back since then. To this particular venue, that is.

Q – You guys are releasing a new EP for the song “Sacred Words” next week….

Mark – We really like that song off the record, it’s kind of a stretch for us. And we wanted to do something special for the fans and put out some live tracks from this recent trip through Europe, so there’s some live stuff from this fest in Hungary on there. But we multi-track all of our shows, so that’s another little tip to it. Maybe one day we’ll release all of our live tracks, I don’t know. But this is just some good ones that we like. There’s a remix with Ben from Dillinger on it, and also an instrumental version of the song. Which some people will appreciate it, I know I definitely appreciate that kind of stuff. As a songwriter, I really like to hear the song without the vocals influencing me. But yeah, it’s all digital, you don’t have to go buy it or anything. It’ll be on Spotify too, and I did some drops so you’ll hear my voice like “Hey motherfuckers, you’re listening to Spotify” or whatever. But yeah, it’s something to keep the loyal fans happy.

Q – You mentioned being able to appreciate instrumental music as a songwriter, who are some of your favorite instrumental artists?

Mark – I like God Is An Astronaut. But going back to some earlier instrumental stuff, I started out listening to Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Yngwie Malmsteen and such. I think my music interest in that level where I’ve like compositions like John Williams….. I mean, I played french horn for four years before, trumpet, and saxophone. I learned music before I ever learned to play in a band. So I was always into more of the composition in music. I’m not a theory head. A lot of people have tried to come up to me and talk about theory…I was into it when I was an adolescent child, and that sounds weird. But I just felt more comfort in playing whatever the fuck I wanted. Sure I know notes and all that stuff, but I’m not jamming with Suicide Silence thinking “Well if we fucking squeeze a sixteenth note here running this, it’s going to be so awesome!”. But that’s why whenever I have the chance, I like to listen to band’s demos before they have vocals on it. Listen to it, make an opinion in post, listen to what they did vocally, and it then gives you an idea. Like oh okay, he decided to do vocals that really followed the rhythm here, or maybe did his own thing or rather. It just gives you an idea of how they make their craft. And I’m just starting myself with lyrics and putting it over the music, because that was always Mitch. He would do it all, and we would allow that. Now with Eddie, he’s a little more open to interpretation, which is pretty cool. So the last record was the first where there was sort of an actual collaboration on lyrics, and where it was going to go. So that’s where we’re all going to as a band, working on words and how they go over what the songs make us feel like, That was 100% Mitch’s gig, for the most part.

Q – While we’re on the topic of instrumental bands, have you ever heard of Cloudkicker?

Mark, No, haven’t heard of it.

TNF – It’s a one man studio project who roughly a year and a half ago decided to tour it for the first time with the guys from Intronaut as his backing band. It’s somewhat atmospheric, but fairly technical and progressive.

Mark – Yeah, I love that sort of stuff, really atmospheric shit. I’ve listened to some stuff you wouldn’t really expect, cause I feel like I’ve listened to all that is “metal”. And I feel like I can emote that in my music fairly easily, but the other shit is what’s hard to get out. I try to listen to an hour of new music a day, which it’s sometimes hard to find an hour every day to listen to some new music. When I’m at home it’s definitely easier.

Q – What’s the one newer band you’d recommend for everyone to go check out now?

Mark – Just one..?

TNF – You can throw out as many as you’d like.

Mark – Twitching Tongues is sick, Black Tongue is also sick. Two tongue bands. Royal Thunder is super cool, I’ve also been listening to this dj named Max Cooper. Let’s see, Gorod, also Ahab. That’s mostly what I’ve been listening too lately. Also some Gravediggas, some hip hop (laughs). That’s about it lately.

Q – You released “You Can’t Stop Me” roughly fifteen months back, are there any current plans for a new full length?

Mark – Yeah. We haven’t really stopped working on new material since we finished the last one. Now we’re at that point where we’re on this tour, we’ve got the cool support, we’re done some headliners, we don’t really see ourselves doing shows after this tour. We’re just gonna go jam and not tour (laughs), and see what comes out. So hopefully a full length will come out of that, but we’re not going to rush it.

TNF – Doesn’t seem like it’s ever good to rush anything.

Mark – No, it’s not. For the first time when Mitch passed, we had time off, which we never really had before. We felt like that little bit of time off, as tragic as it was, it lit a fire of creativity in writing in “You Can’t Stop Me”. It was super good, and that creativity spark has just been flaming hugely since we finished. It’s all just been flowing, and we’re stoked to work on a new record.

Q – I was watching the music video for “You Can’t Stop Me” earlier today, are there any plans to make a new video, or will you mostly just be focusing on writing?

Mark – Mostly focusing on writing. We’re gonna do a live video, with I believe some of the live audio from those festivals, So it’ll be like live video over live audio. I’m not exactly sure of what, our video guy is out here editing. We’ve got a bunch of shit in the hat, just waiting to let it out. We’re not going to play many shows after this tour, but we’ll have various things to keep people interested.

Q – I have to ask, how did the whole bit with having Jason Mewes in the video come about? I literally laughed out loud the first time I watched it.

Mark – It was pretty simple. We had that whole treatment for the music video, we had already known the way it was going to play out, and we just wanted to get someone funny that would be somebody we thought was cool. We really just wanted to get anybody, anybody cool. But in a typical Suicide Silence fashion, two days before the shoot and we’re just like, “We don’t have that.”. “Whose it going to be, what are we gonna do?” and such. We just started asking around, just seeing who was in town. And literally just as simple as that, someone told us “Hey, I’m with Jason Mewes right now.”, like a friend of ours. We were just like “Will he do it? Would he be down?”, and within like five minutes said yeah, he was totally down. So he came and hung out for the day, we shot him ideas on what we wanted and how we wanted it to go. He’s a super cool and funny dude. I mean it’s fucking Jay just standing here in front of me, just doing his thing.

TNF – I always laugh every time I see the end of the video.

Mark – One of these days I want him to come out to a show, just have him come out at the end of a song and just be like “What the fuck are you guys staring at?! You think this is a concert? The fuck you looking at?!” (laughs).

Q – What’s the best concert you’ve ever attended that you did not play?

Mark – It’s so hard to say, there’s been a lot that were really good. Seeing Slayer on my sixteenth birthday was really good. Seeing Black Sabbath in like 2001, Bill Ward was really cool. There’s been so many at these festivals where like, yeah I played this festival, but I’m still part of the concert. There’s just so many…..seeing Meshuggah and Graspop this year was really good. Seeing Bjork in Finland….no, in Roskilde, which I think is in Finland. Nine Inch Nails at Rock Im Park changed my life, I hadn’t seen them before then. Which, I ended up seeing them again three times that year.

Q – Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, any last words you’d like to add?

Mark – Thanks to you for doing this interview, keeping the hype and keeping shit flowing. Thanks to everyone for listening. And even if you don’t like our band, thank you for keeping this shit alive.