MARK HEYLMUN OF SUICIDE SILENCE TELLS ALL ON UPCOMING AUSTRALIAN TOUR.
Interview by Jordan Sibberas
On the back of their success with their latest release, “You Can’t Stop Me”, Suicide Silence have announced a string of Australian tour dates for September. The tour will build on the massive success that the new line-up found when they came over for Soundwave in 2014. Jordan from Music Injection was lucky enough to chat with guitarist Mark Heylmun about the tour, the band’s direction and more.
MI: How are you today?
Mark: Super good! We’re starting rehearsal today and putting the room together so we can come in here and play. All in all, it’s a great day in Southern California, it’s a lovely warm day and shit’s getting done!
MI: You guys are playing six shows when you come down here, instead of just the three main cities, which is the kind of effort that more and more bands aren’t taking on these days. Is it fair to say you’re excited to get over here and see the fans?
Mark: I’m always excited to come down to Australia! I probably say it too much but Australia is probably our favourite place to travel to outside of the states to tour! It’s kind of extreme in a sense, it’s pretty far away and the people are a little more intense. There’s something fun about being so far away, and each time we come back it gets better and better!
MI: Is there a particular show you’re excited for?
Mark: Melbourne, Brisvegas and Sydney are three of the sickest places in the world! Also I love getting far out there to Perth because the people out there are even more weird again. I love weird shit, and I think Australia takes the cake on being one of the weirdest, most stomachable place in the world. It has this weird kind of California vibe all over with a no worries attitude. Isn’t that like your national saying?
MI: Yeah, with a few ‘mates’ chucked in!
Mark: Yeah mate! No worries. That’s why Australia kicks so much ass.
MI: You guys have played Soundwave festival before, how did that compare to some of the US’s touring festivals?
Mark: Like nothing else really. Soundwave is like a vacation. You could do whatever you wanted, from staying in your hotel and never seeing the light of day except to see shows, or you could be neck deep in festival rage and just lose your shit, and do whatever! Are they even doing it anymore? It sucks it’s gone but I know why; how do you even upkeep the best festival? The best locations, the best bands, the best foods, the best hotels? Everything on that tour was a blast. That tour was the first time we played with Eddie and the fans were really accepting which was super reassuring. That tour and experience really jump started the Suicide Silence train again. We hadn’t toured, so we got to get out again and get some confidence, and we put out You Can’t Stop Me and we’ve been riding the wave since then. Soundwave was everything.
MI: You guys have evolved through a lot of adversity in the last few years, how are you feeling today as a band?
Mark: I can tell you that we’re all together right now, and as a band we feel as if everything that has happened has been with good intention all around us. As terrible as it was to have Mitch pass, we’re years into continuing with the band and it sucked and we miss him every day but every day as a group we’ve become tighter and every day we’ve realised how much we love making music together, as an artistic outlet. We’re not kids anymore, we’re grown ass men and we love this shit more than we ever have in our entire lives.
MI: Rumour is there’s a new album coming out. Without giving too much away could you tell us a bit about it?
Mark: The new record will be out when we can get it out! We recorded a bunch of new songs with Ross Robinson pretty much living on the beach in Venice, California. We treated it like it’ll be the last ever piece of music we’ll record, we had to seal the deal in case we never got to write another record, this is the way we would want to be remembered. We really were diving in deep on the process, on what it is to come together and write songs as a band. As well, it was all natural, we recorded it all on tape; real sounds, real takes on vocals, real drums, real guitars. We took it back to The Cleansing, we recorded live with no click track, and we went in and did what it is we do. We’re really stoked but the masses are going to have to wait a little bit until we’re ready to let it bleed those earholes.
MI: One of your recent film clips for the song You Can’t Stop me gave me both claustrophobia and arachnophobia, was it as scary to film as it was to watch?
Mark: No! Not at all! It was a bit scary for some of us that have that irrational fear of snakes! There were huge snakes all over the place which was a little scary but it was heaps of fun. Also we were kicking around with Jason Mewes who was hanging out, and it was heaps of fun kicking around with this hilarious ass dude.
MI: When it comes to your guitar playing, it’s very exciting to listen to. It feels like underneath the heaviness there’s a stable base of rock and roll. Who has been influential over your career as a guitarist?
Mark: I guess from day one for guitar… ‘cause I’m not a guitar player first when it comes to music but I played other instruments first before I picked up the guitar, but for guitar Randy Rhoads, Tony Iommi, Pete Townsend, and then once I had that foundation I got into more shreddy stuff like Dimebag, Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Joe Satirani and all those kinds of guys. And then I got into more of the eclectic guitar kind of stuff, like John Maclaughlin, and there was a big period where I was into Dream Theatre. But then I fell back onto the rock and roll, and that’s what I love. There’s nothing better than The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, and The Who is my favourite band to watch live videos of because they were so aggressive! You mightn’t hear it on record because of how much heavy shit there is these days but if you look up The Who live, with Keith Moon on drums, that’s my shit! I played keyboard, trumpet and French horn before guitar and I was really into The Doors, and Bob Dylan and shit like that, but metal has always been big for me too. Black Sabbath were my first concert, and that’s been the foundation. I’ve always looked forwards to seeing the “Prince of Darkness” (Ozzy Osbourne), Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler. Actually, we’re sort of touring with them with the upcoming Ozzfest meets ‘Knotfest in California, which is a huge thing for me!
MI: On the other hand, how about as a whole band? Do you take influence from other bands or do you try and go in clean slate and start completely from scratch?
Mark: Now that we’ve been a band for over ten years, I know from the start we’ve been very vocal about trying to be like, “we want to be a mixture of Korn and Suffocation and Slipknot!”. Years have passed though, and we’ve listened to the music we’ve put out, and now we want to do our own thing, and what we put out now doesn’t necessarily have to remind people of other music. As we’ve gotten older, with where we are at now, we look at the people we’ve aspired to be like, taken note of it, but then gone on to do our own thing. If they did something that we want to do in our past, then they’re there for that reason; they’re paving the way for us. Right now though we want to maintain a Suicide Silence-ism, y’know? If you like Suicide Silence, we have that sound for you and we don’t necessarily want to sound like a mix of Slipknot or Korn or Morbid Angel anymore.
SUICIDE SILENCE AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES SEPTEMBER 2016
Saturday 3rd – BRISBANE – Woolly Mammoth 18+
Sunday 4th – SYDNEY, Manning Bar 18+
Tuesday 6th – NEWCASTLE, The Cambridge 18+
Wednesday 7th – MELBOURNE, 170 Russell 18+
Thursday 8th – ADELAIDE, Fowlers Live Lic/AA
Friday 9th – PERTH, Amplifier 18+
Tickets On Sale 9am Tuesday 5th July 2016 via: http://tickets.destroyalllines.com/
*** Special VIP Packages also on sale: Featuring Meet & Greet, tour poster, tour t-shirt, VIP laminate.
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