Suffocation - Blood Oath [2009] (Brutal Technical Death Metal)
Lable : Nuclear Blast Records
This is exactly what I’ve been looking for from Suffocation. I have all their releases, I love them all, but since Pierced from Within something has always been missing. They recaptured some of it on Despise, and several songs on their last release have it.
But this work kicks ass from top to bottom, and here’s why. Some have criticized the title track as starting too slowly, but I find that it draws me right in as the band begins to wind their way through the dark, twisted passages that they’ve created here. The bass all the way throughout this album is MASTER work. It might not be that Derek Boyer is that good, but he either belongs on the level of the Alex Websters and Eric Langlois, or the guy who produced the bass sound on Blood Oath is a genius. For several songs, most notably Blood Oath, Dismal Dream, and Undeserving, they laid down two tracks of the bass guitar, the normal background foundation bass work, and on top of that there is what sounds like an undistorted slap bass line, and it all sounds awesome. The bass as a whole is not buried in the background like it is in most death metal. The way they accentuated the bass guitar on this album almost reminds me of how Iron Maiden or Black Sabbath features Harris and Geezer in their music. It is that good and I commend Derey Boyer for being the author of it.
I am a sucker for NYDM breakdowns, and Suffocation throws in some sick ones throughout, most notably on Mental Hemorrhage (1:10) and Images of Purgatory (1:30)
More on the bass – if Suffocation was going to pick a song to double up as a bonus and include as an instrumental version, they picked the right one with Pray for Forgiveness. Just listen to the bass lines from 2:30 on, the lead guitar follows as the bass leads. I love it. Marital Decimation was also a great song to pick as a re-do from their ‘lost’ album, Breeding the Spawn.
All this with no mention yet of the great work always expected from Mike Smith, Mullen, or Hobbs / Marchais. Smith’s drums are as powerful and consistent as ever, and Mullen has retained his power and guttural delivery, while becoming a bit more understandable as he has over the years (not that I really care about the understandability too much). The soloing on this album is great. There’s no flashy wankery, but all of the solos are very well written and appropriately placed within the structure of each song.
There is very little here to prevent me from giving this 100%. I just don’t like to do it on principal. This album has restored my faith in Suffocation, and my belief that they’ve got a lot left in the tank. This album is going to (happily) cause me to go back through all of their older works again, to make sure there’s not something I missed the first 100 times through. They are back up there as one of my favorite bands, along with fellow NYDMers Immolation and Incantation.
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