Add Zedd Unpacks the Emotional Gravity of ‘Suicidal Strain’
Punk Head: The album moves constantly between restraint and collapse. From quiet piano passages giving way to heavy rock and orchestral sections dissolving back into silence. Do you think of dynamics here as artistic choices, or emotional honesty refusing to stay flat?
Add Zedd: I don’t really think about it as one big concept across the album — every song has its own emotional path. Some tracks naturally start quiet or restrained and then build into an emotional outburst. Especially the ones about inner conflict — that kind of tension can’t stay flat, at some point something breaks, and the music becomes heavier or more aggressive because that’s the honest place it leads to.
So the dynamics aren’t there just for contrast — they’re a consequence of what the song is feeling. You can actually see it pretty clearly in the video versions on my YouTube channel, where the visuals grow together with the emotion.
Punk Head: Several tracks wrestle with silence: emotional withdrawal, withheld words, unspoken damage. Was writing this album a way of breaking the silence, or learning how to live with it?
Add Zedd: That idea really belongs mostly to one song — “Your Silence,” the last track on the album. It’s less about pain being expressed and more about emotional distance and all the things that never get said.
Writing the album wasn’t a way to break the silence. If anything, it was learning how to live with it. It’s a very common situation in relationships: one person shuts down — sometimes because of ego, sometimes because they hold on to their hurt — and expects the other one to keep bending, apologizing, trying to fix everything alone. But finding a way out has to come from both people. When only one keeps trying, the relationship eventually collapses. That’s basically where that song ends.
Punk Head: Your son performs guitar parts on the album. How did that change the emotional weight of revisiting songs rooted in isolation and inner conflict? Did it shift the meaning of the record for you?
Add Zedd: My son’s involvement was actually very practical, not symbolic. There are things I just can’t convincingly do on a computer — especially electric guitar solos. Maybe it’s a lack of experience with samples, maybe just not my skill set. He plays well and has a good instinct for phrasing, so on a few songs, he recorded the solos I couldn’t recreate digitally.
In “No Emotion,” he also helped me find that specific punk-style guitar tone that breaks into distortion and overload — I needed the guitar to almost scream.
It didn’t really change the emotional meaning of the album for me. What changed was the sound: some songs ended up very different from how I originally imagined them.
Punk Head: “Hello” opens the album in a state of suspended longing. Why did you choose restraint as the doorway into such an emotionally heavy record?
Add Zedd: I never wanted the album to jump into your life with loud rhythms or immediate intensity. For me, a full record works more like a story — moving from song to song through different emotional states: conflict, self-conflict, tension with the world, all under a kind of loneliness and distance from the person you care about.
So “Hello” is basically the doorway. It starts from that empty point — how everything feels flat, colorless and lifeless when you’re alone — and the rest of the album grows out of that state.
Punk Head: “Breathing by Spring” introduces momentum and hope, but it still feels fragile. At that point in the album, were you reaching for optimism or simply refusing to stay in the dark any longer?
Add Zedd: It’s actually about hope. Even when you spend a long time in a heavy state, the human mind still looks for something good — sometimes almost unconsciously. “Breathing by Spring” was meant to show that small positive energy that still exists inside you despite the depression and the distance from the person you love.
It’s the moment when you start imagining being together again, and that changes the feeling of everything. Musically that’s why it’s probably the only track built mostly around major tones instead of minor ones.
Punk Head: “Raguel” stands apart as a story of vengeance and survival. How did it feel to finally give that song its full form after holding it for decades?
Add Zedd: “Raguel” is a bit different from the rest of the album. I think of it like walking forward with a clear goal and suddenly looking to the side for a moment — seeing someone else’s struggle, someone else’s story. Sometimes that helps you realize your own life isn’t as dark as it feels.
Unlike the other songs, which were recorded on tape back then, this one lived only in my head for more than two decades. I kept humming it to myself so I wouldn’t forget the melody. It stayed there for almost 28 years until I could finally shape it into what I always heard — a kind of jazz-fusion feel with brass and saxophones.
It’s also the only track where the lyrics are new. I wrote them just last year, not decades ago.
