Band: Silico
From: Richmond, Virginia
Their formation story:
(J, vocals): "The OG lineup was from when we were teenagers, got a couple buds, and started getting together. Originally, we were a sludge band, kinda just music we were all into. We made an EP called Hivemind, which was straight-up sludge. After that our old guitarist Ric and I wanted to push into a harder more aggressive direction, so we started writing.
"Shortly after we started writing the new material we thought of as our entire changeup, I got a call that he had passed. This threw us out for a bit; he was family and one of a kind. After that, we spent a year or so drifting around different sounds and experienced a change in lineup, our drummer left due to creative differences, and our bassist Jesse became our new guitarist.
"We added two new members for this new sound, our drummer Dave, and had two bassists, first Blake then eventually Robby. We spent about a year writing until we finally landed on the sound we wanted finally came up. We decided to not change the name to honor our brother Ric, but the sound became something Ric and I could only dream of at the time. Thanks to Dave and Jesse writing beside me, our sound and lineup have gotten their new personality."
Their sound in their own words:
"Honestly, I don't know many ways to describe it. The entire discussion among listeners is whether or not we are hardcore. Personally, I think the music has reached a point where people expect a specific sound. We are a direct contradiction to that belief even though we take so much from NYHC, Southern groove, and early metalcore, we also shove our own style in there so much that it catches people off guard, but we got the beatdown and we got the message so who fuckin' cares?
"Some bands I was listening to while writing were Irate, Merauder, and Strife. But I know our guitarist Jesse was listening to Converge and Swear to God a ton."
Latest release info:
"We just put out an EP, Civil Unrest, that's been in the process since our new lineup got together. The main driving force of the record is our focus on making the sounds we grew up with and love into something new with our own influences. Our process instead of following along a guideline of what a genre is, is to change it and mold it how we like.
"Our belief is that we have a sound that is supposed to be free and aggressive, Hardcore and metalcore have a fuck ton of rules. We don't like that, so we bend them while also keeping the familiar aggression and appreciation of the sound."
Future plans:
"We are going to be focusing on writing for a release, and touring. The recording process was a ton of work, so we're just happy to be back doing the enjoyable part of all this, writing and playing shows. We got a show up in Pennsylvania with Injest were really hype for."
What other bands from their region should we check out?
"Virginia has some very good scenes, here in RVA we got some homies like, Bleed Out, SLAAT, Hanahaki, Green Tips, and Paradiso all those guys help us out and we see often, also met the dudes from Wetwork recently and really enjoyed their sound. Richmond also has a dope community with Punks For Liberation which have a ton of bands in their association with all kinds of sounds.
"Outside of RVA, a few bands that come to mind we really fuck with, are Junkhead, Sekilos, Die Standing, Lay Waste, Victim of Suffering and Machete."
Silico on social media: Instagram
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