When I heard the sad news today about Mitch Lucker's death, my first thoughts were of a day back in 2005 when I first heard about Suicide Silence. Now of course, Suicide Silence would go on to become an unmentionable heresy among Metal elitists, but back then they were a little known-band from Riverside, California. In fall 2005, I was a freshman at The University of Connecticut, training to be a DJ at 91.7 WHUS Storrs, the University's radio station. While I was not officially on-the-air until the following semester, I was allowed to do album reviews for the music department.
Many of these reviews were from the large bin of CD's that got sent to the station, filled with the expected experimental and indie submissions one would imagine coming into a college station. But when I finally found myself with a metal release to review, it was Suicide Silence's self-titled debut EP. With a crushing and entertaining mix of death metal dissonance and hardcore aggression, I thought they were fantastic. When I got my first time-slot as a Metal DJ that next spring, Distorted Thought of Addiction was an early favorite of mine.
Oh, and let's not forget the raucous music video (skip to 00:40 for laughs!):
Mitch Lucker's energy and powerful vocals are on proud display here, and the video succeeds precisely because it makes you want to jump in and be part of it (…if you like fun that is). And its videos like this that make me think back to that great time when many of our favorite bands were cutting their teeth and making their names known.
I didn't really keep track of Suicide Silence much after the EP, but it must be said that Mitch Lucker and his band mates helped to get a lot of kids into extreme metal. Sure, they may have been beyond the pale for self-proclaimed "real-metalheads" (whatever the hell that means), but they made fun, heavy music and Mitch was loved by much of the Metal community. He will be missed by his band-mates, along with legions of gauged-eared tatted-up fans, and of course by his family. May he rest in peace.
