Suffocation
Pierced From Within

THE REVIEW

After delighting us with two true masterpieces that are essential timeless works of Brutal Death Metal, Suffocation returned in 1995 to destroy our ears with another immense piece of work.
When it comes to brutal music, Suffocation are perhaps the first to be named, and with immense merit: having recently returned to tread (again unfortunately without that immense genius named Doug Cerrito) the path of the most extreme and disorienting Death Metal with the excellent "Souls To Deny" (read Judah's review, it's truly worth it) after an exhausting hiatus and promising us even greater things for the near future, the fundamental New Yorkers had drawn from their musically advanced taste real milestones of Death such as the debut "Effigy Of The Forgotten," the excellent "Breeding The Spawn," and this incredible "Pierced From Within."
And to think that this masterpiece was anything but expected, given the departure after "Breeding The Spawn" of the original drummer Mike Smith, which had fueled tension within the band and consequently had turned Suffocation into a giant with feet of clay, ready to crash down at any moment (imagine what a boom!), a crash avoided by the sudden recruitment of the many-armed Doug Bohn, technically superior to Smith (he is a drummer with a jazz background) but in my opinion slightly less effective and incisive in blastbeats, Suffocation created a true brutal paradise that saw them take the initial breathtaking high-speed sound and, after integrating it with ever more technique and originality and losing the initial influences that gave the band a vaguely thrashy sound, bring it to its logical conclusion, meanwhile taking the opportunity to get lost in technical and compositional flourishes and exhibitions that rather than being described should just be listened to (an overused phrase but always effective).
A masterpiece, as we were saying: the tempos slow down but the riffs lose absolutely none of their innate originality, always presenting the trademark sound, the technique becomes increasingly excellent and refined, and the intricate compositions of Doug Cerrito strike again.
If there was a flaw in the previous "Breeding The Spawn," it was found in the lousy production, which rendered the sounds chaotic and, given the explosive and impressive frequency of very fast blastbeats, hid, undermined, or even made incomprehensible the terrifying accompaniments of the string instruments.
Suffocation knew this, so...What would you have done?
What Suffocation cleverly did: they contacted Scott "Parsley" Burns, the most renowned and effective metal producer of the time, who guaranteed the band the hard, dry, piercing, and heavy sound that they had been needing for far too long and exploited it to the fullest once they had it available, creating a true sonic attack that left one in awe but was inflected with some "melodic" undertones that made everything even more original and lyrics with deeper meaning, especially featuring frontman Frank Mullen grappling with religious issues and the deeper recesses of the human soul, occasionally interspersed with a fair dose of that inevitable Gore that makes Brutal so...brutal.
Simply perfect: in this album, defects are not detected and the merits are too many to list.
The virtuosities of Terrance Hobbs and the phenomenal Doug Cerrito explode powerfully in every song, masterfully supported by a never too praised Chris Richards, who, to be honest, is slightly less inspired here than on the predecessor but still offers a divine performance (listen to believe), and by a Doug Bohn on a roll and often engaged in steamroller-format blastbeats. All, of course, overshadowed by the cavernous growl (although slightly more "calm" than on "Breeding The Spawn," perhaps due to the production) coming from the ungracious throat of the brilliant Frankie Mullen.
Simply, listen to it. Let each track crush you, overwhelm you, violate you, drag you to places where brutality reigns supreme, let yourself be trampled by Mullen's voice, be devastated and hammered by Bohn's killer rhythms and by the excellent deliberately dirty sound of Richards, let your eardrums whistle at the power of the two guitarists, listen to it at full volume until you can't take it anymore.
Suffocation asks nothing more of you.