With their new album Superbloom let loose on the world, California metal band SILENT PLANET members Garrett Russell, Mitchell Stark, Alex Camarena and Nick Pocock have got together to go through each of their releases and pick their favourite tracks.
This could get messy…
Come Wind, Come Weather EP (2012)
● Mitchell Stark: From Come Wind, Come Weather, I’m going with A Flood Strong Enough to Consume the House because of the guitar parts.
● Nick Pocock: Which one yells “gatekeeper!”?
● Garrett Russell & Mitch: That’s Depths!
● Mitch: Yes Depths, the original Depths is on that one!
The Night God Slept (2014) + lastsleep EP (2014)
● Mitch: OK, The Night God Slept.
● Nick: Oh man, so many options!
● Mitch: I’ve gotta go with Tiny Hands (Au Revoir).
● Garrett: Yeah, I would actually say that too, I’d go with Tiny Hands.
● Alex Camarena: I’d probably say First Mother (Lilith).
● Nick: Or The Well?
● Garrett: I’ll say this. For anyone who’s a Silent Planet nerd, I think that Silent Planet as the band started with Tiny Hands. From a musical perspective, that’s kind of when Silent Planet actually started. It was when we had our older guitar player, Spencer [Keene], and his sound established what he wanted the band to be. I think in some sense Tiny Hands is something that you could still find in our music. It’s probably the furthest back. Whereas if you go back to the Come Wind, Come Weather – it’s cool, but it’s maybe too far back to really find the identity.
● Mitch: I think back to before I was in Silent Planet when I was just a local band kid who looked up to these older guys from my area who were in a band – and I heard Tiny Hands. I’d listened to Come Wind, Come Weather, I thought it was great, I knew all of it. But hearing Tiny Hands, I was like: oh this band, they’ve just turned over a new leaf, and there’s something really, really cool happening here.
● Garrett: And the funny thing is, the moment we needed a guitar player we’re like: we need to hit up Mitch. We were like: Mitchell from Central Valley – hit him up immediately. And we convinced him to quit his job, and he’s been touring with us ever since. Now he is us. We are Mitch. And for the lastsleep EP, we’d go with Tiny Hands as well.
Everything Was Sound (2016)
● Garrett: Nick, you have a favourite for this one.● Nick: For Everything Was Sound, it’s maybe a strange choice, but I’ll probably go with Inherit the Earth. I love the singles, I love the whole record too, but for that one specifically, I just had never heard a song like that, and it painted such a clear image in my head. It’s a core memory for sure.
● Garrett: That’s when I wanted him to join our band. I met him, and he was like: Inherit the Earth is my favourite Silent Planet song. And I’m like: that’s crazy, that’s sick dude. I love that one. No one’s ever said that. Now he’s in the band, and now he gets to decide what we play.
● Mitch: That was also our live intro before it became a full song. We used to start the set with the little <imitates Inherit the Earth riff> and then we’d start.
● Nick: I didn’t know that! That’s cool!
When The End Began (2018)
● Alex: From When The End Began, I’d go with Firstborn (Ya’aburnee).
● Garrett: You know, I get the most touching and heartbreaking messages about that song and what it means to people. We did this thing in 2020 where we’d play that song and then, not really me, but the band on stage would start doing this whole jam session and Alex had a cool groove and that was probably my favourite part of the tour – partially because I got to take a breather, but also partially because I was watching them just play music and getting to be a fan for a second, that was pretty cool. And now I’m trying to learn guitar, so maybe I can play the chords. But it was fun to just kind of watch them jam for sure.
● Mitch: That was very fun to do. It’s the only part of our set ever that we really got a chance to just loosely improvise.
● Garrett: And I think we gotta bring that back.
● Nick: Bring back the jam!
Iridescent (2021)
● Garrett: For Iridescent, I’d probably go with Trilogy.
● Mitch: Yeah, I think so. Trilogy was a pretty important song for us, I would say, just in terms of opening us up to a little bit more to the standard metalcore market.
● Garrett: Yeah, modern metal.
● Mitch: Yeah, totally. That was maybe one of the first times that we had really consciously made an effort to write something that was structurally a bit more easy to digest, and also vocally and lyrically too.
● Garrett: And Dan [Braunstein] got me to do that. Normally I would write all the lyrics, and then I’d go into the studio, and I was trying to fit them all in a song and Dan was like: no, just scream animal noises or whatever, and just wanted me to take up the space. And he was like: okay, now what if you wrote lyrics that have to fit within that puzzle. And what was cool was it kind of brought me back to something that I think anyone who studies English and writing and journalism knows, is sometimes you do more with less when you’re concise, and you just get to the point. And that was a good exercise for me.
SUPERBLOOM (2023) ● Mitch: I feel like the answer for SUPERBLOOM has to be Antimatter just because it’s probably about as different as we could be. Even the title track is very, very different for us. It’s in a major key, it almost feels like Jimmy Eat World or The Smashing Pumpkins or something like that. But to me, Antimatter is like: that’s both feet outside of the box now, fully embracing this new heavily synthesised electronic sound. So I think it probably has to be that. I dunno, are you guys with me on that?
● Garrett: Yeah, yeah. Well, actually no (laughs). SUPERBLOOM.
● Mitch: I feel, just the response to Antimatter for us – nobody’s ever responded in such a way, we’ve never had such a little ruckus on the internet about something that we’ve done.
● Garrett: It’s true. And what I love about SUPERBLOOM too is – it’s like a love song. And I’ve always wanted to write a love song, but within the context of who Silent Planet is of course.
● Nick: It’s not like a mushy, romance-y love song.
● Garrett: Yeah, I think it’s a love song without the ego, not so much about someone taking someone, not like that desire that is to define or take something, but the desire it is to just look at something beautiful and beyond you and just surrender to it. And I think there’s a time that everyone has to surrender to things, whether it’s love or it’s inevitability or whatever. And I think the song is kind of embracing the unknown and the possibility that in this world – we don’t even know what it is, and we’re kind of dreaming. And to find peace in the “not knowing” and just be able to embrace the people around you.
