SUICIDE SILENCE Frontman Talks RANDY BLYTHE's Legal Troubles; Band's Next Studio Album

Finland's Kaaos TV conducted an interview with vocalist Mitch Lucker of California deathcore masters SUICIDE SILENCE at this year's edition of the Tuska open-air metal festival, which was held June 29 - July 1 in Helsinki, Finland. You can now watch the chat below. A couple of excerpts from the interview follow.

On LAMB OF GOD singer Randy Blythe's arrest in the Czech Republic on manslaughter charges in connection with the death of a fan two years ago:

Mitch: "There's been times times where members of our own band — I'm not gonna name anybody — or even crew members, while were on tour, have been detained or taken somewhere where it's like, 'Oh, we don't know if we're gonna be able to play tomorrow.' 'We don't know if the bus is gonna have to pick them up in prison.' And stuff like that happens. Not only is it scary, but then it's like, well, how many shows do you have miss? And when you're a musician, you're playing shows. CDs sell 10 times, 20 times less [than they used to]. You have to be on tour when stuff like that happens, situations like that do pop up, and they do all the time. Sometimes you're in Canada and you can't get out or you can't get in. Even going overseas, lots and lots and lots of weird shit can happen. It's a very, very scary thing. It's like, 'Fingers crossed. I hope nothing happens.' And that's not a good feeling. I wish him the best of luck. Randy is a very intelligent, very badass dude and I know he'll get out of it. It definitely did cost the band a lot of money. And not only missing shows and stuff like that but having to actually physically pay to get yourself out. It's a bumout. But I wish [Randy] the best of luck and I hope that everything works out for the positive for those guys."

On the progress of the songwriting sessions for SUICIDE SILENCE's next album:

Mitch: "We've only pre-productioned the riffs, we haven't done pre-production with vocals, it's just programmed drums and guitars and bass so far, and then what we do with that, we take that into pre-production mode where we all go into a studio that we have at our drummer's house and write it, record it, track it with real drums so it's not programmed drums. Do all the click tracks out to make sure everyony's happy with how fast this is or how slow that is, and then bass tracks and then vocals, and then we start talking about sampling. And once that's done and we'll do 15 to 20 songs, then we take that to the studo and actually do it 100 percent and record it and then pick between those 20 songs which 12 or 13 we're gonna put on the record and what we're gonna do with the rest. So right now we're in phase, like, two of the new record, which is actually really far. We've never taken this much time to write a record. We wrote 'The Cleansing' [2007] and recorded it live in two weeks. 'No Time To Bleed' [2009] took five weeks, 'The Black Crown' [2011] took three months. And this new one we're working on, we've been working on it for a longer amount of time than we've worked on any other record, so it should be by far another step up. I don't think we've ever gone back or retracted in the writing and the recording of our records. From 'The Cleansing' being live in two weeks to 'No Time To Bleed' to now where 'The Black Crown''s at, I think we're just gonna keep moving forward and never hitting a plateau. We always wanna incorporate new things, do new things, improve the quality of the sound, improve the quality of the songwriting, improve everything. And if we're not doing that, then we're just being fucking lazy, and we're not a lazy band; we work our asses off."

On the lyrical inspiration for the next SUICIDE SILENCE album:

Mitch: "I write all the time; I write, like, 24/7. 'Cause just beng alive and everything inspires you day to day. Even being on a flight looking at the people that are two rows over from you, something they do can inspire an entire song. I'll write fucking 10 pages about it and then just decipher that and break that down into a song that means something to someone else. A lot of it is [being] homesick, missing my daughter. But not just like, 'Ahh, I'm homesick, I miss my daughter.' It's more along the lines of being put in the position where you need to fulfill something and you have people that want you to be there to fulfill their needs and also there's people back at home that need you there to fulfill what they need and desire. So it's definitely a lot deeper, a lot more personal. I think as each record goes, it gets a lot deeper and a lot more personal."

SUICIDE SILENCE's latest album, "The Black Crown", sold around 14,400 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 28 on The Billboard 200 chart.

The band's previous CD, "No Time To Bleed", opened with 14,000 units in July 2009 to land at No. 32 on The Billboard 200 chart.

"The Black Crown" was released in North America on July 12, 2010 via Century Media Records. The CD was recorded with heavyweight producer Steve Evetts (THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, EVERY TIME I DIE, HATEBREED) and features guest appearances by KORN singer Jonathan Davis and SUFFOCATION frontman Frank Mullen.

The cover artwork for "The Black Crown" was created by the Delaware-based freelance graphic designer and illustrator Ken "K3N" Adams, who has previously worked with LAMB OF GOD.