Suicidal Tendencies Christmas Sweater. Suicide Is Still Punk. Mike Muir discussed ‘Still Cyco Punk After All These Years,’ four decades of hardcore, and how they become one of extreme music’s most influential bands. Mike Muir has done this for years. His voice, laden with sighs, is typical of a 55-year-old musician in his umpteenth record press cycle fronting Suicidal Tendencies. “It’s always something, man,” the singer adds over the phone in his Venice, California cadence, drawing from his earlier rhymes. “But you must continue.” Suicidal Tendencies is a legendary heavy metal and punk band. The comparatively high prominence their almost decade-long major-label career at Epic Records gave them helped introduce generations of fans to hardcore and other extreme musical forms. MTV aired their music videos, including “Institutionalized,” which Beavis And Butthead’s adolescent audience saw. (They agreed.) Their 1987 album Join The Army and 1998 follow-up, How Will I Laugh Tomorrow When I Can’t Even Smile Today, put them at the forefront of crossover thrash metal, winning over Metallica, Slayer, Agnostic Front, and Cro-Mags fans. He appears blissfully unconcerned by fan differences or allegiances on the day of our conversation. Muir: “To me, everything that Suicidal did is punk rock.” He compares his ethos to John Lydon’s, saying that Public Image Limited’s art-rock terrorism was as punk as the Sex Pistols and that Johnny Rotten and Cyco Miko were similar. Although outsized and cartoonish, both names express the artists’ disrespect for authority and passion for subversion. “I can’t use the word ‘punk,’ because other people define it differently,” he says. The label “punk” has become amorphous, co-opted for better or worse by people who may not have been welcome during Muir’s youth. He witnessed the changes as an elder statesman in a subculture that kills as well as praises its icons. “I remember when I thought 30 was old,” he says. “I know how I would have seen myself at 16—’Who the fuck is this old fuck?!’” As the thrash rebirth continues, with Power Trip, Red Death, Municipal Waste, and Iron Reagan leading the way, Muir’s Suicidal Tendencies maintain a living link to the past. His presence allows generations to talk in a nostalgic fetishized scene. Naturally, punk habits persist. Muir is skeptical of political and other objectives, a character trait from his stage origins. He recalls with frustration another interviewer from earlier in the day of press junkets for the band’s new album, Still Cyco Punk After All These Years, trying to trap him into a Confederate flag gaffe. “Sometimes they don’t realize how [obvious] it is,” he laughs tiredly. “Sometimes you just have to leave slowly and without looking back.” Given the band’s history, goading Muir into unwittingly embracing white nationalism seems odd. Despite several band changes, Suicidal Tendencies has had the most diversified heavy music lineup. Black and Latinx musicians including guitarist Rocky George, drummer R.J. Herrera, and bassist Louiche Mayorga were crucial in the band’s 1980s heyday. Mexican-American Robert Trujillo plays bass in Metallica, and African-American Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner is a jazz and funk star as part of Kamasi Washington’s all-star band and on his own critically acclaimed albums. The current lineup with guitarist Dean Pleasants, bassist Ra Díaz, and former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo is no exception. Suicidal Tendencies Christmas Sweater

Is Suicidal Tendencies thrash or punk? – Suicidal Tendencies Christmas Sweater:

Mike Muir founded crossover thrash band Suicidal Tendencies in 1980 in Venice, Los Angeles. The band has changed lineups, with Muir being the lone original. Muir plays with Dean Pleasants, Ben Weinman, Tye Trujillo, and Greyson Nekrutman. The band’s notable instrumentalists include guitarists Rocky George and Mike Clark, bassists Louiche Mayorga, Robert Trujillo, Ra Díaz, Josh Paul, Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner, and drummers Amery Smith, Jimmy DeGrasso, Brooks Wackerman, David Hidalgo Jr., Thomas Pridgen, Dave Lombardo, Brandon Pertzborn, and Josh Freese. Along with D.R.I., Corrosion of Conformity, and Stormtroopers of Death, Suicidal Tendencies is considered “the fathers of crossover thrash”. They have released fourteen studio albums (four of which are re-recorded), two EPs, four split albums, four compilation albums, and two long-form videos. The 1983 self-titled first album produced “Institutionalized”, one of the earliest MTV-aired hardcore punk films. Suicidal Tendencies’ popularity grew exponentially over the next decade, and with their second studio album Join the Army (1987), their first to enter the Billboard 200 chart, the band began to experiment with a heavy sound that helped form the crossover thrash genre. THrash metal and heavy metal fans loved Suicidal Tendencies’ first three Epic Records albums, How Will I Laugh Tomorrow When I Can’t Even Smile Today (1988), Controlled by Hatred/Feel Like Shit… Déjà Vu (1989), and Lights…Camera…Revolution! (1990). The latter two earned RIAA gold certifications. The band’s sixth studio album, The Art of Rebellion (1992), peaked at number 52 on the Billboard 200 and featured their biggest songs “Asleep at the Wheel”, “Nobody Hears” and “I’ll Hate You Better”. That album, along with Still Cyco After All These Years (1993) and Suicidal for Life (1994), saw the band dabble with thrash metal, progressive, and funk music. After leaving Sony and Epic, Suicidal Tendencies split in 1995. A year later, Muir and then-rhythm guitarist Mike Clark revived the band and released Freedumb (1999) and Free Your Soul and Save My Mind (2000). For the rest of the 2000s, Suicidal Tendencies largely performed live and released new songs on split albums or compilation albums like Friends & Family, Vol. 2 (2001) and Year of the Cycos (2008). Suicidal Tendencies returned to releasing new studio albums in the 2010s with No Mercy Fool!/The Suicidal Family (2010), followed by 13 (2013) and World Gone Mad (2016), both of which were well-received and considered comebacks.In 2018, they released the EP Get Your Fight On! and the album Still Cyco Punk After All These Years, which included unreleased and re-recorded songs. The band is writing their fifteenth studio album. Suicidal Tendencies Christmas Sweater