In this episode of The Rock Metal Podcast, we're chatting with Mark Haylmun of the band Suicide Silence about their new album ‘Remember... You Must Die’ out now.
During our chat we touch on a lot of great tips for musicians, such as how to make songs as heavy as possible by having an incredible relationship with your producer.
'Remember... You Must Die' was produced by Taylor Young in conjunction with Morgoth Beatz.
For fans of Whitechapel, Chelsea Grin, Born Of Osiris, and All Shall Perish.
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Guest Resource
SuicideSilence.store - Connect with Suicide Silence!
Guest Music Video
3 Heavy Hitters
1. Work with a producer who shares your sense of humour, and is on board with your goals for the record
2. Unplug to take a break from life, look after your mental health
3. Are you a live band or a studio band? Approaching the recording of the record as such will yield the best results
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Show Notes // Transcript
Jon Harris: All right, Mark, thank you so much for coming on and say hello to all of our beautiful listeners.
Mark Haylmun: Hey, what's up, listeners? What's going on?
Jon Harris: Well, it's a beautiful day now that you are here, my good man. Now, great record. What was the greatest moment for you producing this record, Mark?
Mark Haylmun: Greatest record for me producing this record, I think I would say that just getting to know Taylor Young, the producer of the album. He is a fucking awesome dude. Awesome producer. And we had a great time putting together with him. And he took us to Studio 606, the Foo Fighters studio. And that was really cool to be able to go there and record drums. I think working with producers is one of the coolest things to do on an album. And it can really change from producer to producer. And Taylor was just so fun to work with. We've never worked with someone that is literally I say it all the time, doing all these interviews. He's our age. We've never done that before. So we're just working with somebody that we could crack jokes and guarantee he's going to get it.
Jon Harris: Uh-huh, Yeah.
Mark Haylmun: Sorry to all the other producers. If you're listening to this, we're not saying you're old and you don't get us or anything, but you're old and you don't get us. I know.
Jon Harris: Remember that time we had the chance to work with Mutt Lang, but he didn't get any of our jokes, so we were just like.
Mark Haylmun: *laughs*
Jon Harris: Cool, so getting to know Taylor Young, who's the producer of the album, and we'll definitely turn around and chat about that. Again, going to Studio 606, a Foo Fighter studio, to record drums. And then you mentioned that working with Taylor, he's your own age. Probably actually both of our age. I don't know how old you are, but I imagine we're about the same age. So that's cool.
Mark Haylmun: 35 years old.
Jon Harris: Sweet. I'm about to be 38. So, yeah, we're hanging in there, baby.
Mark Haylmun: Mm-hmm.
Jon Harris: And it can change from producer to producer. I guess. My follow up question to that, if I could pick, like, one thing, is recording drums at the Foo Fighter studio. Were you there for that? Can you talk about that?
Mark Haylmun: Oh, 100%. So we thrive on being a live band. We write music together, we play the songs together. We imagine these songs as live performances. So when it comes to recording the drums, we always try to approach it as live as we possibly can. So 606 was the perfect studio for it because it's got a huge tracking room, couldn't tell you the dimensions, but it's got a really big and then there's individual ISO rooms. So we got to set up all of our cabinets and ISO rooms and put on headphones and have the drums all mic'ed up in front of us and stand around. Ernie, who was recording drums, playing the song to us, playing the song, not playing the scratch tracks, not playing to pre recorded anything. Everything was recorded live off click. There's two parts that are recorded at click because one is super fast and we wanted to make sure it was perfectly fast and one is super slow and we wanted to make sure it was perfectly slow, but everything else is off click and live. So, yeah, we got to go into this place, which Studio 606 is not open to the public. You have to know someone to go there. And we were able to get that in and get in and utilize that studio, which is technically more of a rehearsal space for the Foo Fighters almost, than a studio, even though it is fully stocked studio. Yeah, it's cool. It's like the Foo Fighters headquarters. And it's also like the Foo Fighters almost Nirvana Museum too. And you're not allowed to take pictures in there. You can see it, but you're not allowed to. Or you could take pictures. You can't post it. So I have a picture of me in the bathroom holding that Learn to Fly Moon Man from the VMAs, which, dude, that music video was a major game changer in my life. Like, look at all the Suicide Silence's music music videos. We were inspired by those funny, quirky, not so serious music videos. So, yeah, it was just all this amazing, just childhood. You never even knew you wanted to go to a place like that because it didn't exist when you were a kid. And it's like, holy shit. This is, like, built for me.
Jon Harris: You built this for me, right?
Mark Haylmun: You knew I was coming.
Jon Harris: That is fantastic. Thank you.
Mark Haylmun: *laughs*
Jon Harris: But on a serious note, Studio 606, the Foo Fighters Layer, getting to record drums there, holding the 'Learn to Fly' VMA, Video Music Award from the MTV Days, and being inspired by that music video and creating your own music videos for Suicide Silence. Question are you familiar at all with the URM Academy and Nail the Mix?
Mark Haylmun: I just did their podcast yesterday.
Jon Harris: Sweet.
Mark Haylmun: With Taylor.
Jon Harris: Sweet.
Jon Harris: Yeah. My son was doing the most recent one with Machine, and I know that he had some questions about that. And some time ago, a year ago, two years ago, they did one with Tue Madsen, and I remember going over a track, and it was like, holy crap, this band is good. They did this live off the floor without a click. Like, wow. And so it was really cool to hear that formula. I guess that rhythm of how you guys work still coming through live off the floor. Only a couple of things with click you mentioned, which is super romantic. You want it to be perfectly fast and perfectly slow. And I just imagined you on a date sitting across them and saying, sometimes I like to go perfectly fast, and other times I like to go perfectly
slow.
Mark Haylmun: It's got to be just right.
Jon Harris: It's got to be just right. Don't worry. We'll have individual ISO rooms.
Mark Haylmun: Yeah, I mean, to what you said, I think that there's kind of different methods of approaching how you're going to capture the sound that the band makes. And some bands, they're approaching creation of sound to recreate on stage. Let's make this noise and then figure out how to make the noise on stage. And then there's other ways of going, we make this sound together. Let's figure out how we're going to capture it, and we're just kind of more on that other side of it.
Jon Harris: Makes sense. What was the biggest challenge for you on this record?
Mark Haylmun: I would say we kind of messed up in not having Eddie down as often. Our singer lives in San Francisco, and we are all in southern California. And the biggest challenge, I think, was having enough time working on the lyrics and vocals. It all became this kind of everything was happening all at once, once Eddie was down and in the studio with us, and we needed to actually have revisions. So it was kind of this thing. Eddie was going and working on vocals with Morgoth, if you know who Morgoth is, he's a producer, works in hip hop a lot, and he was working on Eddie, working on Eddie, working on vocals with Eddie, as opposed to Eddie coming straight to us or us going to Morgoth. Like, we were working on music, and Eddie was working on lyrics to demos that we had, and there was this little disconnection. And then once we all came together, we realized we need to have revisions, and we need revisions quick because we're in the studio right now. So it became this kind of we were all confident in the music, and then it created a all right, you did everything you did with Morgoth. Now we're in here with Taylor, and I work on lyrics, and other people in the band have their input. We're. We're a five headed beast. So once we were actually working on that, it became how do we also being good collaborators, man, we don't want to knock anybody down and be like, your idea sucks. This is the worst shit ever. It's more just like, you know what? I already have an idea and I want to present this idea without making you feel like what you have done is worthless or something like that. So so, yeah. And then it and then again, that's kind of harkens. Back to your first question. What was so badass about it was working with Taylor, we had this awesome producer and he's really good with lyrics. And it made me and Eddie and Taylor realize real quickly, like, this is a great trifecta right here. Once once we got past the hard part about it, we realized, this is actually great. This is really fun. We're having a good time revising all of these lyrics and coming up with other ideas. So even though that was probably the most challenging, it still presented this new trifecta of Taylor, Eddie and myself, that we were just killing it and having a great time doing all of that.
Jon Harris: Well, that makes sense. I mean, turning the challenge into a bonus and a plus, but basically messing up not having Eddie down as often because he lives in San Francisco and the rest of the band is in SoCal. So having enough time to work on those lyrics and those vocals and how Eddie was working on vocals with Morgoth. And then eventually it just became this trifecta of Eddie, Taylor and Mark and that once you got past the hard part of it, you had a lot of fun. But, I mean, maybe chat a little bit about Morgoth.
Mark Haylmun: Morgoth, dude, Morgoth kills it, man. Morgoth is killing it. It was great to have him involved in this. And another little side step about that is that he bought a cabinet from me in 2009 or something, a guitar cab. And I got to know him and then I started giving him guitar lessons for like, maybe a year or two. And that's how I first met him, back when he was Michael Montoya out from I think he moved here from Arizona and was going to MI. So I've known him for a long time.
Jon Harris: Wow. Very cool. You're available for guitar lessons. Good to know.
Mark Haylmun: Sometimes.
Jon Harris: Sometimes. Okay, very cool. One thing that I read about the EPK was HAP. I don't know if that's how you guys are saying it, but HAP or H-A-P or happy. How happy can we make this song?
Mark Haylmun: How happening?
Jon Harris: How happening, baby? Heavy is possible. And constantly asking, is this song heavy as possible? And I'll start with a broad stroke question, which is basically, just tell us about that experience.
Mark Haylmun: You know, I think that it's kind of always been our ethos, so to say is make things heavy as possible. But I would say that from album to album, maybe what everybody thinks is heavy has changed or evolves. And on this in particular, I think that once that phrase was said, Garza said it. Day one, we had the conversation, what are we going to do on this album before we even started writing it? What are we going to do? And he was like, let's just go heavy as possible. Everybody loved it. H-A-P. He started joking around. Totally. If you know Garza, he'll be like it's. HAP. He just started going on a rant and we all got on it. We all loved it. And on this, I think we all had the same intention of what heavy meant to us at this point. We were all on the same page, so it's like this kind of not so new way of approaching it. But I think we were reading the same book and we knew what we wanted. We all knew what we wanted. And same with Taylor. Back to Taylor. He is a heavy producer, so this heaviest possible thing, there was no miscommunication, no lost in translation, heavy as possible. And when that happens, that does it creates a fun writing environment. And if you're listening to something that somebody's throwing at you, it's immediate, you know, right away, you're like, okay, yeah, that has potential, but it's not quite there yet, or that's it it's just right there.
Jon Harris: Yeah, well, something you mentioned was being on the same page. How do you make a song heavy? How do you know when you're there? And you mentioned, like, we knew when we were there. We were on the same page. Taylor was on the same page. We knew when we were communicating it, but can you describe how you knew when you were there? How did you know that the song wasn't heavy enough and it could get heavier?
Mark Haylmun: It's really down to chemistry and the fact that we have wrote a lot of songs together. And even Ernie, who this is kind of his first real album with us, has written songs with us on our previous album, so it wasn't his first time. And how it works with us is if something isn't to someone's liking, speak up. But don't speak up unless you have something you're going to present with that disagreement of that part. Bring something. Don't just say you don't like it or else we're going to get mad at you. This won't result in a good we're always trying not to get mad in the jam space because we've stormed out of rooms and left and done all kind we've gotten all these big fights and stuff while writing. But it's like, why are we getting mad? So it's like we've tried to, over the years, get past that. And it's like if you don't like something, usually you vehemently don't like it. Like, oh God, that's going to ruin this fucking song. So if it's going to ruin the song for you, have the idea and make it better and stoke us out, make us laugh instead of getting us mad. And that's usually how it works. It's like someone will be so against it that they'll be like, oh, this is way better. And then everyone agrees. So it makes a more cohesive and enjoyable session. If that's the way that it's worked.
Jon Harris: Well, that makes sense. Going back to the whole chemistry thing, making sure you're on the same page, et cetera, et cetera. Now, something else that I happened to read was trying to recapture the sound of 'The Cleansing'. How did that factor into creating this record?
Mark Haylmun: I wouldn't even say that that was something that we spoke about. I mean, I think that this is the thing that happened with the cleansing is that we. It's. I would say it happened on accident on this. Like us being on the same page and reading the same book. That is what we were doing during the cleansing and didn't realize it. And over the years, maybe we were on the same page, but we didn't communicate it well, so we just didn't have as much chemistry yet. We were still young. And now this is, whatever, our 7th album, and we've written over 100 songs and done tons of experimenting and tons of different things. And the reason why I think this maybe can come off like it sounds like the cleansing, because to me, I don't really think it does. I just think that the energy that was put into it is so similar to that time. And we haven't been on that same page like this in a really long time. So I think the energy that you get when you listen to the music is like this kind of sounds old school, but the riffs are so much different, the songs are so much different. And the cleansing is always going to live on an island because we were so young and our abilities had only developed so far, we're never going to be able to fully recreate that. But at least being I don't want to say, like, lightning in a bottle. It's such a cliche thing. But this is kind of a lightning in a bottle type record, how it came about like this and it turned out the way it did. It's. Like I still listen to it and go, Damn, it sounds like us firing on all cylinders again. I haven't heard that in a long time.
Jon Harris: And I love the way you put that. It's us firing on all cylinders again. And then on the cleansing, you guys were on the same page, maybe by accident or whatever the case may be.
Mark Haylmun: There is elements that sound totally cleansing-ish. But that's also because that's our sound.
Jon Harris: Yeah, like you said earlier, it's the collection of you guys in a room playing it. How would you define success at this stage of your career?
Mark Haylmun: You'll never really know if you're being successful. That's how I would define it. I think it's a mystery. I think that it's a fleeting thing. I think there's moments of times where you're like, okay, that was a success, but then there's the feeling afterwards, but it could have been more successful there's. I think for me, I don't really gauge things in terms of, like, if it's a failure, you know, that's another one. But if it's a failure, it's an opportunity to learn. So success definitely is in the eye of the beholder. Some people want to be selling out stadiums, but they're only selling out arenas. We're still selling out 1000 cap venues. And I mean, a sellout is a success. That's a difficult one to fully answer. And I always make the kind of joke is that I feel like I damned myself when I was really young because I've always known I wanted to be a musician. And I said that I'll be happy if I can pay my bills and pay for groceries and and have a place to live. You know, and if that's my gauge for success, then I'm very successful. You know, I can, I can pay my, I can pay my bills, and I can buy myself food. You know, sometimes there's no more than that. But I mean, I'm not starving.
Jon Harris: Damned yourself because you knew you wanted to be a musician. Sound familiar to anyone? And you'll be happy if you can pay your bills, buy groceries and have a place to live. So by that you are successful and you're and is selling out. So there you go. Perfect. Now, somebody you've mentioned quite a few times is Taylor Young. And I know that my son had some questions about Machine, so I'll just go to a production question and just say whatever it is that you want to say. Taylor Young Machine. Let me have it.
Mark Haylmun: Machine is still a super good friend of mine, and we talk often, and he's a very talented producer. And Taylor Young has become a good friend of mine, and he's a super talented producer. They are almost polar opposite producers, but I'm speaking on the way the Machine worked with us. Machine was this kind of I'm going to program the human into you guys. I'm going to use all of my technical abilities to make you sound the way you sound, or maybe even better. And Taylor is the kind of producer of you guys are visceral, you sound awesome. I want to find a way to capture the best version of you, and neither one of those is the correct way. I don't think there is a correct way. And I think that they're both savants in their own way and extreme taste. They both have great taste and exclusive taste. And I think that's important too, is knowing what you really, really like and then also being able to identify other people's taste, knowing when like, oh, people can like that. But that's not something that I like observing art and dissecting art. Both of them, they're totally different people. But yeah, just amazing producers.
Jon Harris: Yeah, well, it sounds like it was absolutely a wonderful experience to be able to work with both. And like you said, they're both completely different producers. Machines more like programming the human into you. Taylor is more like come as you are, accepting you as you are kind of thing. But in both cases, just becoming masters of the craft, identifying your own taste, developing your own taste, identifying somebody else's taste, getting to know art for art's sake. Something else that I wanted to get on was you had mentioned, shall I call them campy music videos. Funny quirky.
Mark Haylmun: Yeah, I think that it kind of goes back to what I was saying about how we're. We try to have fun with what we're doing and we try to have some sort of fun aspect to the band. And all the way back to even before I was in Suicide Silence, which I joined in 2005, and the band's been around since 2002. I knew them as this death metal band that had Family Guy samples. And I'm like, oh, that's that band that they use, the Family Guy samples. And it was kind of funny, but it had this kind of stark difference in the live show, you'd be like, this funny sample that if you know Family Guy, you'd be like, oh, I know that sample. And then all of a sudden, it's just like, whoa, fuck, this is crushing me. And I think that that is once we had our feet in our shoes at a later date and we were able to decide what we wanted to do music video wise, I feel like that is kind of where it all came from. It's like having this little balance of we don't want people to look at us and think that we're going to murder them. We want people to look at us and feel a little bit more human towards us. And if we can make fun videos and we can entertain them, I almost want to make a music video where you're so captured by the music video and so entertained by the music video. You have to watch it a couple of times to hear the song. I want the song to be the second, like, the secondary to it and to make it so it has rewatch ability and yeah, it's just fun, man. I mean, how could it not be cool to sit around with your friends and be like, how can we take what this song means and turn it into us getting shot on the other side of a shooting range by priests and chicks and all different, even though the video talking about, what that video? It's enough. Your music, okay?
Jon Harris: Beautiful. What's the number one thing that you want people listening right now to do?
Mark Haylmun: I mean, usually everybody's trying to look for a break. Life is hard, life beats you down. And if you're looking for a nice podcast to listen to, to get away from it all yeah, unplug and try to take a break mentally, you know, if you're here for information and want to learn something, then I would say look another direction because I ain't no teacher. I was just going to say that I play music because I did. I wanted an escape. I wanted something to free me from whatever life stresses and angst I might have. And if that's why you listen to music, then come to a show, listen to our records and know that's where our band really comes from. It's like we want to set people free for a little bit and just be able to have a good time. We're still rooted and fun and even though our music is violent and gnarly sounding, we're like the total opposite kind of people. We just want to have a good time, enjoy ourselves and make some cool music.
Jon Harris: Yeah. Could not agree more. Set people free a bit. Rooted in having fun musically and then most importantly, like you mentioned, maintaining mental health, unplug a bit, relax, maybe enjoy a podcast. And if you're enjoying this podcast, this would be a good time to tell a friend about it. Hit that, Like, hit that Subscribe button. Make sure that you're getting all the notifications for future episodes. And also as well, go ahead and head over to TheRockMetalPodcast.ca. There you'll get all the show notes for today, transcripts, music videos, links to connect with Suicide Silence and speaking of which, Mark, thank you so much for coming on to The Rock Metal Podcast today.
Mark Haylmun: Abso-goddamn-lootly. Thanks for having me on.
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