THE POST WHERE I PROVE MY MANLINESS
part 2
Suffocation — Effigy of the Forgotten
This is Suffocation's first album, and given how much my brothers-in-metal Batlord and Briks have mentioned it in the past few days I've decided to review it. It's categorized as brutal death metal...so I'm already opposed to it from the beginning.
Ugh, this is really difficult. This makes the grindcore album I just listened to look ****ING WEAK! This is legitimately impressive how heavy and death ridden this sounds. Suffocation is a fitting name for this band: it's unrelenting, and it will slowly brutalize you. Brutal death metal indeed. The effect the vocals have on me I can only allegorize as being slowly tortured to death.
Alright several things to address right away. I'm getting tons of similarities to Dark Angel with these utterly flawlessly executed fills, tons of riffs, many starts and stops, and of course slight tempo changes. Nothing jumps out at me for the first two tracks, except the continued slight awe I feel for the guitars and drums, and the continued loathsome feeling I have for the vocals. There are very few times (mostly just a few dwindling seconds) when I actually like the vocals, most of which are when the singer actually screams or yells instead of the 'spoken word' brutal death metal voice.
The first minute of the third track "Infecting the Crypts" is killer. Some of the MEANEST riffs you will ever play for the first minute. These are relatively clean riffs, but man, they're good. Then the song slows down as the heaviest riffs yet start playing and the vocals return. Around the first minute mark, the song returns to sounding much like the previous songs. Still, that first minute is going to be hard to top. Also during the first minute is one of those few fleeting moments where I like the vocals: The song opens with a brief growl-scream (?) and that's the kind of stuff that doesn't bother me.
"Seeds of the Suffering" has a crazy solo around the half-way point that is very impressive, and goes all over the place. The vocals are starting to bother me less, but now the biggest problem I have with this is that all the songs sound the same to me. There's nothing that I particularly like except for the growling guitars, but those are played so fast it's hard to latch onto them.
Grinding guitars open "Reincarnation" and there's promise on this track. Oh sorry, that's not the name of the track, it's "Reincremation," that's clever. This is probably my second favorite track so far, because the guitars actually standout on this track, and it's the shortest track on this album, heh.
"Mass Obliteration" also has 4 or 5 good riffs, and the are some brutal, dual-channel vocals on this track, and that is something I haven't heard on this album. The more I listen to this album, the more I'm able to detect subtle differences on each of these tracks. I have to say, the second half of this album is much better than the first. Whether that's because of the reason I just discussed where I can detect more things I like on each of the songs, or it's actually better, I don't know.
Alright, last track–with perhaps the most sinister sounding title ever in metal "Jesus Wept." Seriously, that's just genius. The guitar playing on this one sounds monster truck-y. If that makes any sense. Just imagine some brutal downpicked guitar playing, played really fast, most of the playing is 90% shredding, 10% riffs, but there's some occasional "clean" riffs, and of course there's tempo changes that don't follow any set pattern, and there; Monster truck guitar.
This wasn't the most pleasant experience I've endured, but I suppose if it was just brutal death metal without the technical side to it, it could have potentially been much worse. Probably only five tracks from this I would ever want to listen to again. "Inffecting the Crypts" is easily my favorite of those.