It wasn't as bad as I expected. Better than the material from the other re-union albums. What did blow major chunks was the production. Way too glossy for this kind of music. Really hated it.

Modern production just needs to stop. It sucks the life out of a recording and is just terrible compared to the quite frankly excellent production quality of the late 80s and early-to-mid 90s.

The production to me is fine, especially in the drum department. Maybe the guitars could of had more life but overall it sounds good. Like Bastard said, it doesn't really seem like Suffocation, except for Frank's vocals. Maybe once we hear a song that has a trademark suffo-breakdown that'll change

I don't know about that. A lot of crappy production there as well. Well, perhaps not as bad as this one for this particular style.

Of course there's crappy sounds in that era too (see Darkthrone), but as a whole that era of metal music had overall infinitely better sounds. What was considered polished and plastic back then can now be seen as organic and natural compared to some of the crap mixes being done nowadays. There was no loudness war, no brickwalling, no real way of tweaking a record to sound like it was made by a machine and not real people. It was just overall better.

The production sounds fine. It's loud and modern and all that but I guess I just don't mind the new standard that much. Is it better than Effigy or Pierced? Hell no, but it isn't bad.

This has absolutely nothing to do with loudness war and brickwalling. Production-wise, this has pretty much the same problem as the latest Nile, which is primarily a rather poor choice for guitar tone.

Not only does it look like JFAC's last album, but it sounds like it too. Both in terms of riffs and production. Which is sweet because Demonocracy ruled, but it's not quite what you want Suffo to sound like you know? Regardless, good song. Hoping for some slams in the other songs.

As I'm listening I can hear what everyone is talking about. seems like the guitars are tuned up. not much of the signature groove. there are def parts that sound like suffo and like how someone said... parts that are similar to something that would've been on Blood Oath.... but the thrashier stuff and the general pace reminds me of Malevolent Creation like during envenomed.

Not so big on the modern tech death riffing style which in a lot of areas, with the riffs being thicker walls of churning with lighter melodies created by little bleeps (With obligatory modern guitar-may-as-well-be-a-keyboard guitar tone) over the top, but the parts which don't do that shit are pretty cool, and I dig the solo. I'm happy to see the tempo back up after Blood Oath which was too restrained for it's own good. I'm sure the longer numbers will give all the breakdown heaviness we expect.

Not exactly Suffocation that I know but I still enjoyed it.

I agree with the general sentiment; good/very good song, somewhat lifeless production, and a lack of Suffo's signature sound. I like the reunion albums (though Blood Oath is a bit boring), and this was pretty cool, but it could use some tweaking here and there, particularly regarding that guitar tone, which sounds far too emasculated for Suffocation.

The guitars should definitely sound stronger in the mix (they are a bit lacking), but it is a pretty damn good track. I don't know if its just me, but this is getting me more and more psyched about Culross' drumming throughout the whole album, for it is pretty beastly here. I'm hoping this is the weakest track of the album. Still, not a bad track.

meh...The vocals sounds too processed and their sound has been done countless times by 1000 other technical death metal bands out there.

So? It's their sound. Cheap knock offs don't actually reduce the original product's quality.

See, that new track, 2:21 - 2:52 sucks for a Suffocation riff and beat. Also, somehow I feel Mike Smith would have covered this with rolls, whereas there are good 10 - 20 seconds stretches here of just straight blasting, with rolls in the riff transitions. I didn't really think Culross was a good fit for Suffocation, and this sort of proves my point, though I hope the other songs are better. Who would I have picked for drummer? Not sure...

FWIW, my fave albums: #1 BtS, #2 S/T (yes, I like that it's fucking... BEAUTIFUL), #3 PFW, #4 BO

Yeah after listening to it again, Dave Culross is gonna crush this album. I mean, c'mon, DESPISE THE FUCKING SUN. In a way, this is the going to be the album that should have been the full-length after said EP. Production-wise, of course not, but this already sounding more promising than Blood Oath, in my opinion.

Darkthrone? I don't mean crappy as in poor or cheap sounding, just something that is unfitting for the music style. Which is something Darkthrone have never done. As little as I care for some of their material - especially the last n albums - they've always had a production that really fits with their music. Especially Blaze, Funeral Moon, Hunger, Panzerfaust and Total Death have magnificent production jobs. A lot of the death metal production jobs from that particular era are really lacking in the lower frequencies.



No, it won't. While it has one DC, it's missing the other, the more integral one.

Not trying to start an argument, but could you give some examples? I've always perceived early-mid 90s death metal as being pretty busy in the lower frequencies, so much that the mids tended to receive less attention (think Pierced from Within, Legion, and Human, all from the same producer, but still) and nowadays it seems to me that modern death metal has reversed that.

Smith was also a big part of the reason they were holding back so much on Blood Oath. His mindset is that if the kids want easy deathcore, that's what he should deliver. Culross is more normal and less creative than Smith, but at this point Smith seems to be concerned solely with profit and not with writing good music that he enjoys.

I'm mostly not a big fan of Culross' drumming. It's beastly but didn't fit with the Suffocation sound on Despise the Sun and it doesn't here.

However the song is still pretty good.

x2




If Mike Smith did this or that, I don't know or care, but it's not going to make Culross a better fit for Suffocation. I think I would have liked to hear Pete Sandoval on the kit.

This new song is so stupid. Drumming doesn't work, as previously mentioned, and the guitar tone just isn't right at all for Suffocation. Oh and yeah, the artwork is shit. Disappointing, really dug Blood Oath for the most part.

That was strange. The song was decent at best, it has a cool solo, but it didn't sound one bit like Suffocation. The only thing that had me thinking that it was Suffocation was Frank's vocals, which sound the same as on Blood Oath. It didn't flow very well and it just sounded like a generic tech death band. It seems like their music is going the way like the album cover: generic.

I'm not too thrilled either. The blasting, marching drums are not my cuppa, but I really liked the dissonant part in the middle. I won't get my hopes up...

A little late to the party but I just managed to listen to the new Suffocation song. I think song structure wise, it's good. Frank's vocals were top notch as well. I got an issue with the guitar tone though. Is it the production, that everybody is talking about, that is making it less sound a bit tame?

Most likely. As said, modern album production just kinda sucks compared to the quite frankly excellent death metal sounds of the 90s.

For that, we need analog. But we have to blame the producer completely for such jobs because it is within their power to replicate that distinctive sound.


/shudder

I know a guy from up around here that was asked by a band to transfer their final mixes over to 2" tape in a deliberate attempt to recreate the old 90s sound. For all the good that DAWs and modern technology have provided us, such as easier, less ridiculously time consuming tracking and mixing sessions, it's also brought about some really bad things, like the Loudness War and every album coming out nowadays sounding identical.

Like I said, this has nothing to do with the Loudness Wars™, and certainly nothing to do with analog vs. digital either. This is purely a case of evolved production tastes. The guitarists decided on a meh tone, and the band as well as the engineer decided for a mixing plan that unavoidably made it worse. It's that simple. They could've very easily replicated the tone from say Pierced from Within, and they didn't, because they probably didn't want to, or didn't care, or it didn't cross their minds. Not because modern technology is evil and soulless and shit.

both of y'all.

Not all modern production is crappy, mind you. For example, Devin Townsend's works are generally made even better by his super compression, and Monolith of Inhumanity by Cattle Decapitation sounds massive with its very modern, very loud sound. By personal preference, though, I prefer the sounds of metal records made 20 years ago to the sounds of metal records made today.

That fucking guitar sound is soooooooo dissapointing. I get the feeling they are not tuned as low on this track. The guitar tone reeks of every other techy brutal death metal band. This is very disapointing. The production is fine with me as far as the bass, drums, vocals, and over all layering is but god damn the guitars. They just do not sound like Suffocation.

I'll be perfectly frank right now: This album cover sucks. Yeah, it sucks. Huge disappointment. I'd prefer their self-titled to this.

that artwork was probably hand-drawn on wacom by a highly skilled artist - perhaps even sketched on paper before all the post-op in photoshop... but one thing you can be absolutely sure about is that it wasn't "computer generated"

don't get me wrong, i certainly don't like it, but that's mainly the fault of the composition and chosen colours, not the technique

Even if it was hand drawn it looks like utter shit.

Yeah that art's not CG at all. It was definitely drawn in a program, but it's not a CG cover.

Oh hi, you quoted me incompletely. Ergo,

But yeah, I agree again with what you said...it's the production tastes and the trend being followed by current bands. We need more bands like Ataraxy and Horrendous embracing the oldschool sounds.

I was just responding to the "we need analog" part. It's just that every time something like that pops up I want to kamehameha people. Sorry about that, but yes I do agree on the rest.

You people suck. This is good stuff, music and artwork.

Album trailer has been posted. I'm pretty excited for this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osLxPA7CQ1w