SUFFOCATION
SUFFOCATION – “Hymns from the Apocrypha”
by Thor
What hasn’t been written about SUFFOCATION already? So, I beg your pardon for what will be a brief but redundant biographical recap for 100% of you gracious readers. But just in case someone kidnaps a priest and forces him to read this review, here you go:
SUFFOCATION was one of the first handful of death metal bands to break through. When I was 15, my best friend and I called into a local radio station to win a cassette tape of 1991’s “Human Waste” and I’ve been a fan ever since. That rough-around-the-edges introduction was followed up the same year with their full-length debut “Effigy of the Forgotten”, an album that laid the blueprint for literally every brutal death metal album thereafter. Following 1995’s “Pierced from Within” and 1998’s “Despise the Sun” EP – one of the meanest collections of death metal tunes ever recorded, the band hung it up for a while.
SUFFOCATION returned in 2004 and has released albums reliably ever since, peaking with 2013’s “Pinnacle of Bedlam”. Like most first-wave death metal bands these days, though, they’re down to only one original member, guitarist Terrance Hobbs. So, the question in cases such as this one is whether the current iteration of the band – one that often no longer sounds like its namesake – is a good band, or a bad band.
Fortunately, the version of SUFFOCATION that shows up on their latest LP “Hymns from the Apocrypha” – out now from Nuclear Blast – is an absolute monster, though neither very groundbreaking nor very SUFFOCATION-like.
The most integral of the newest band members is vocalist Ricky Myers who, as it turns out, is an absolute force on the mic in addition to being one of my favorite drummers (DISGORGE). His ultra deep gutturals sound very similar to those of the late, great “esophagus” Joe Ptacek from BROKEN HOPE. The result is that the band’s music here seems to have followed Myers’ lead. Heaviness dictates all. Groove replaces grind as the default texture, and the production – which the band handled itself for the first time – is thick and extremely punchy, with sub-drops to spare. As hyperbolic as this might seem, “Hymns from the Apocrypha” is arguably SUFFOCATION’s heaviest album.
This latest chapter of the band’s legacy is the very definition of exemplary brutal death metal with tech tendencies. No scientists, mechanics, or cavemen were harmed trying to reinvent any wheels. And, again, it doesn’t particularly sound like SUFFOCATION. Sure, I can hear Mr. Hobbs’ familiar riffing, but otherwise, this is something else. And neither one of those facts is bad, but rather might be the reason “Hymns from the Apocrypha” works so well. I’ll be spinning this one often.