Interview - Mark Heylmun of Suicide Silence speaks with Mark Derricutt - October 2020

By: Mark Derricutt

Long before the days of lockdowns, bubbles, and social distancing - California based Suicide Silence released their 5th album Become The Hunter on Valentine's Day. Since then the whole world has been turned upside down, and somewhere among them this interview with guitarist Mark Heylmun somehow got lost in the shuffle.

Mark Derricutt sat down to discuss the then new album, last years live release and the charitable organisation behind it, joining the band and reminiscing their 2014 Auckland show with Down and Depths, and 2010 appearance at No Sleep Til Auckland.

Howdy. It's Mark Derricutt here from Libel Music in New Zealand here. Good to talk to you.

Hey man. Yeah, good to talk to you too.

Cool. Well, where to start. I love the new album. I've been blasting this all last week. I'm not much of a death core person, in general. I like more straight death metal, black metal, prog, and this new album kind of has elements of all. There's a lot of progressive kind of riffs and drum fills in there that just really... I don't know, just really kind of takes your sound to the next level or …

Well, I appreciate that. It's hard because as we have progressed, deathcore kind of grew around us. So, it's hard to identify with us writing deathcore. It just kind of seems what Suicide Silence does gets called deathcore. That's totally fine. I don't have any problem with it. But as far as where our influences come from, predominantly they come from the death metal side, and I listen to tons of prog kind of stuff. So any of those kind of elements coming through or maybe satisfying more of a traditional death metal fan, I could see that, this album out of any of them I think would resonate more with the traditional death metal fans, unless they get turned off by breakdowns, because we still love doing breakdowns and there's a shit ton of them on the record.

I think that's one of the elements that I don't necessarily get. I like the breakdown in that, it's a progressive... That it touches a bit on the prog of time shift changing and all that kind of stuff, but I kind of like keeping the rhythm going. I guess if you're right in the circle pit... on breakdowns, that's really hit the spot as well.

Yeah. Dude, I don't know, it's a funny little perfect storm of elements of members of this band, like where we all came together and where our influences came from. It's various eras of metal that all have this halftime super big element to it. I'm not going to say Metallica has breakdowns, but it's like Metallica has got those fucking super grooves. Pantera for me was basically what got me wanting to write music.

There's tons of slams. From Dan Kenny, our bass player who's literally a brutal death metal, slam death metal aficionado to Garza who's favorite band is Korn and loves Slipknot and these groovy kind of things. Alex is kind of all over the board, really more the hardcore, maybe even metal core influence. And then myself, I'm kind of just classic metal. I like just classic shit. Sabbath got me going. Pantera was... Just changed the game. But all of us come from kind of every era of metal and I don't know, it's just like this is the sound we make.

It all kind of combines together to actually make a surprisingly cohesive slab of metal.

Yeah. It surprises us. Just going back on talking about the entire band, I wasn't in the band, but they were there a band for three years and I used to go watch them play and I didn't necessarily get what they were doing. I was like, "This is like Cannibal Corpse, but this is also..." We're from the same area as Avenged Sevenfold, Atreyu, Throwdown, Eighteen Visions and all those bands were bigger and doing things. I remember seeing this element of that in that too. I'm like, "This just doesn't even make any sense to me."

Then, became friends with them and ended up being in the band and getting to know them more and seeing what they listened to. I was just like, "Damn, like this is interesting." Because... I don't know. It was always intriguing to me because it was fresh for the area and fresh for the time and I could have never predicted that I'd be here talking to someone in New Zealand about Suicide Silence fucking 15 years later.

Just touching on that, what was that process like of joining the band? You say you became friends with them and you were in the scene, you were going to see the shows, was it just kind of a, "Hey, we need a guitarist to join," or was there an interview process that kind of…

It was... Okay... We were all in this all over the map scene. There was bands that were really death metal, bands that were really hardcore, bands that are really progressive, The Faceless was one of those bands that we used to play with back then. Basically, there was this really kind of buckshot scene and we would all play together. I was in a metal core band called From Agony Within, which we never did anything.

I just met everybody. We weren't super tight. I was more close to our original bass player who worked at a tattoo shop that my friend owned and I would always hang out over there. He was kind of a mentor dude for me. I was really young and he used to book shows and stuff so he'd give me advice. I just... I met them. I looked on Myspace one day... This was Myspace days. I saw... I know dude. This was 2005, like summer of 2005. It had said that Suicide Silence was having open guitar tryouts and they were welcome... They would have anybody... If they wanted to try out, they could try out.

I just hit up the bass player because I had contacted him and I wasn't in a band at that time. I had quit my band and I even said to my band like, ""I want to do something that's more fucking like blast beats and fucking more brutal, something a little heavier because I was kind of in this Chimaira, As I Lay Dying kind of band. Then the next thing I knew I was in Corona trying out with the other guitar player, Chris Garza. We just talked and hung out. We played some guitar. He showed me one of their songs. Then the drummer showed up and then he interviewed me, asked me my influences, we played the song that Garza had showed me.

And I can pretty much tell that I got the gig. We just hit it off and that I got more insight on how they were coming up with their sound and where they were coming from and it really made a lot of sense to me. They actually didn't hire me right away. They said, we have a show at the a Whiskey in two weeks. We're going to give you a live CD... A live recording of us and we want you to learn all of it and we'll rehearse next week. We'll play this show and we'll see what happens. I played that show and then I had been in the band ever since.

Cool. I guess there's no... Nothing like a live interview with the fans.

Yeah. 100%. That show was crazy too because that was when I really saw like, "Oh man, these guys are really coming up. They have fans here." There's... I was in a band that's like, "Cool, we're bringing our friends." - there's like 30 or 50 people there, you know? Then this was like Whiskey. We were supporting a national act and the crowd was just fully fucking into this shit. And I was like, "Oh my God. All right. Let's fucking do this shit."

That's cool. So you released a live album last year, wasn't it? Live and Mental, that came out last year?

Yeah, We had done a benefit show for Mental Health America foundation based out of California. We always try to do some sort of charity event around Christmas time. It's... We haven't always been able to it depending on how busy we are. But that was one of the best things we did. We hosted this show, raised a bunch of money. They use the money that we raised to open a... It's actually dedicated to our old singer Mitch. It's called the Mitch Lucker Clothing Closet. It's where homeless people can go and get their clothes washed and get their... Get laundry done and store clothes there and come back and get it whenever they want it. That show that we... The live recording that we have is the recording from that show and it was just an amazing energy at that show.

It is really one of the best shows we've ever played. It was just so much fun and just knowing that it was all like going to a good cause and all the friends and family were out there. We had a reggae band playing in the backstage room. We literally ended... it was a unique thing. It ended up being a solid recording. We had it mixed and mastered and just sounded sick. So we put it out.

I was listening to that a while ago and I was thinking, "Oh man, I really want to see these guys again." I think the last time you came to New Zealand was... You played with... It was I think in 2014 playing with Down and a local New Zealand band Depths. I believe from memory, I think I missed that show, but I believe that it was the first show with Eddie?

Yeah, it was. That was our first run. We had done Soundwave right before, so we came over to New Zealand right after. And yeah Down headlined. I remember that local band, they were really good. Was it dips?

Depths, yeah. Really good band.

Oh Depths. Yeah, totally. Okay. Completely remember now. That was a great show too. That's actually a highlight of my life, was that show because we had met Phil Anselmo before and he had met Mitch and this is all after, Mitch had already passed. Phil was super cool. He was super cool. He said a great speech on stage about us and we hung out with him all night and just talked all kinds of shit. He gave us so much insight and advice and stuff. It was really... Honestly, really sweet for Phil Anselmo. He was usually being very wholesome.

I also... The reason why it was such a highlight was I got to play Bury Me In Smoke with Down at that show. I have a picture of me playing Pepper's... That's either a 355 or 335 Gibson and Phil is pouring a beer in my mouth. Just like the classic Phil and Dime images or videos of him pouring beer in Dime's mouth. It's the coolest shit. I... It's insane.

And the other fucking awesome thing was I'd never been told by a singer... And I wish I could you could see my mannerisms but I've never been told by a singer.... points at me, points at the Wah on the ground, does a hand motion, like to hit the Wah and then a hand motion to do a solo. And he just tells me to do a guitar solo and I'm like, "All right. Here we go. I'm going to start ripping." Never been told by singer to do a fucking solo, except for Phil Anselmo,

Well, if you're going to get told by someone to do something, it's going to be Phil, right?

I guess so dude.

With that in mind is the chance of another New Zealand show in the future?

I am legit... I'm currently trying to get a Australian... That side of the world, tour lined up for the hottest portion of the year. Trying to come over in like December or January. It's, it's totally like, I don't know, 50 50 chance that we're going to get it lined up, but I'm trying.

Oh, sweet. That'd be great to see you as again. Be, excellent.

Yeah. What's the venue? What's a good venue we should come play.

Either the Powerstation or The Studio, really. For a band your size I'd say those two would... Powerstation was where you played last time.

With Down, Yeah, Man, we'd love to. We've only been to New Zealand that time with Down and one time on the No Sleep Til fest with NOFX. And I think Megadeth was on there and GWAR.

I think that was the only time I've seen you, cause I went to that show. Yes. And that was a great full day of music.

I didn't like that show, that hanger that we played in? That was just reverb city. The sound was shit, dude.

It was great. That was one thing that I noticed. It was great. It was great to see all the bands, but the two stages next to each other inside open hanger room kind of just didn't really work the greatest.

No, it didn't. It didn't. That's my memory of that. I wish it was better because that was our first show of that tour. But it still was cool.

Well, it's been great chatting with you. I'll let you go now and get on to some more interviews. Cool?

Thanks dude, All Right. Have a good one.

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