Mudvayne Frontman Is a Suicide Silence Fan

For the inaugural run of Mudvayne's Pedal to the Metal Tour, lead vocalist Chad Gray wanted to make sure he got one band in particular on the bill: Suicide Silence. The tour, which also features Black Label Society, Bury Your Dead and Static-X, concludes Sept. 9 in Oklahoma City. And Gray says the Mudvayne guys basically selected the entire lineup.

"We picked pretty much everybody that's out here. But Suicide Silence, I wanted. I like the band," Gray says. "They have a lot of things going that kind of follow my journey through life, and different stuff that I was into. Black Label, we talked about doing a tour with just them and maybe another band. And it turned into this thing. And it's been a lot of fun. The bands get along well, mostly because we all have history. Well, all of us except Suicide Silence, because they're rather new. But they're cool. I'm a fan. I like the band."

You'd think a guy like Chad Gray gets free CDs sent to him all the time, and perhaps that's how he became aware of Suicide Silence. But instead, it was a member of Bury Your Dead who turned Gray on to the band.

"I was talking to Mark [Castillo], and it was on a show on our last show," Gray recalls. "It was in Hartford and Mark came out. He's a great guy, and they're a great band. We were just talking, and they had just toured, so I was like, 'With who?'"

When Castillo told him the band was Suicide Silence, Gray says he'd heard the name but never the music. "I asked him what they're like, and he said something about Korn, because they play seven-string guitars. And I think that night I went online, to their MySpace page, and I was like, 'Where is he pulling Korn out of this?' But some of the low-tuned guitars, some of the grooves ... I can kind of see that, but the vocals ... they're night and day."