Suffocation

Very much in the same vein as the previous and interestingly named 'Souls to Deny'; that is a cocktail of the backbone super brutal root mixed in together with the more contemporary melodious paste; the concoction here is an interesting one that pushes the boundaries of the Suffocation sound, in a much needed way. The nineties were farmland for these guys to grow crops of impossibly barbaric produce, like, all seed, no pulp. Barbaric like that. And it worked without a doubt. But they knew when to add in a new element to the composition with pinpoint timing. It was right around that period of a new decade, millennium even, that the change should take place, and it did - who'd want to listen to another version of 'Pierced From Within', a decade later? Perhaps a few maniacs. But besides them, probably no one. Music is about evolving.

The music was always dynamic in this band's discography, but they managed to handle the riffs with enough framework supporting at the back this time around that the songs don't feel like they're perhaps spilling out. The energy is more focused, albeit just as vicious and furious in nature. It's explosive as ever, and granted it doesn't carry the raw charm or novelty of an 'Effigy' or the raw brutality of a 'Pierced', but it's a finely calculated continuation to this act's perennial endeavor.

The solos are fucking horrendous, not all but for a few at least, and not even sonically pleasing as far as mixing but besides that, there's some serious death metal going on in the guitar-work. The riffs are consistently captivating with either bludgeoning nastiness, or an appreciable musicality that's halfway melodic on the occasional hooks. The drums lock in very well with those riffs and there's that tight precision at work with a genuine sense of a methodically crafted casing for each track. The work here feels deliberate and organic rather than forced, with a clearly identifiable mark to most songs, thus avoiding following the path of by-default death metal.

For instance they avoid just tossing heavy breakdowns everywhere (as would've been fashionable in the mid 2000's) and instead manage the pace with perceptible intelligence and song-writing nous, adding in just enough riff before shifting to the heavy lifting material, and there are some crushing rhythms here. This thing just blasts powerful beams of butthole annihilating radiation all the way through like few albums do, and it's nonstop, and one can tell by this point Hobbs and co. had mastered brutal tech-death when there's so little filler taking up any space over these three quarters of an hour. The music, although hostile and borderline murderous to be sure, is seamless and smooth. It's practically jazz when one thinks about it. OK, maybe not.