Suffocation
Effigy Of The Forgotten

THE REVIEW

We are faced with none other than one of the bands that founded Brutal Death, New York's Suffocation. You could say that they, along with Cannibal Corpse, have modified traditional Death (like Malevolent Creation and Obituary, to be precise) by pushing it to an even greater extremism, increasing the speed, intensifying the themes, and employing a massive dose of technique in the service of this musical genre.

The tracks become more complex and challenging, guitar riffs are executed more rapidly (and due to their difficulty, require greater skill), the drummer uses more sophisticated tempos that follow each other quickly. The album in question is absolutely a gem of the genre: the rhythm section presents, alongside the more "traditional" Death tempos, a series of ingenious passages that, despite being written in 1991, remain in my view largely unrivaled.

The two guitarists showcase their skill with lightning-fast solos and intricate riffs executed with surgical precision; the sound of their instruments is further emphasized by a very compressed production, the work of Scott Barnes (the producer who assisted all the major bands of the genre in the early '90s), which perhaps, however, penalizes the vocals. Frank Mullen's growling is muted and quite confusing. Nevertheless, it seems to me a minor detail in the face of this exceptional album; the nine tracks are composed and played with great passion and skill, capable of leaving the listener with that sense of emptiness and paranoid disillusionment that emerges well from the lyrics (see "Jesus Wept").

It is unfortunate that the five have had very few epigones and that their proposal practically ended with this album: unfortunately, I found that even their subsequent works were not composed following the same path and, despite some remnants, they veered towards less annihilating sounds, although of excellent quality and great sonic impact. The album remains an everlasting monument that too many ignore, a masterpiece of technique and compositional skill that every fan of the most extreme metal should own.