Search - Suffocation :: Effigy of the Forgotton / Pierced From Within

Double your pleasure with Suffo!

Wheelchair Assassin | The Great Concavity | 11/14/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Roadrunner records deserves a heaping of praise for its new "Two From The Vault" series. Now, for one extra-low price, you can get two classic albums from the heaviest, most technical death metal band ever in one handy package. Listening to the great "Effigy Of The Forgotten" and the even greater "Pierced From Within" chronologically, you can really see not only how Suffocation evolved from one album to another but what elevated them above the plethora of run-of-the-mill death-metal bands. Morbid Angel and the like do a pretty good job of exemplifying what the genre is about, but during their brief existence (and hopefully their recent comeback as well), Suffocation were basically playing a different game altogether. I can think of no other band that played such complex, technical stuff without sacrificing even a bit of the brutality characteristic of death metal. Death's later output was even more technically advanced than Suffocation's, but noticeably less heavy, to the point where it couldn't even really be called death metal (this is certainly not meant to knock Death; they ruled!). But anyway, "Effigy" and "Pierced" clearly stand as paragons of how technical death should be done. "Effigy" is a steamroller of stunning power and heaviness, with Frank Mullen's impossibly low gurgling grunt serving as an extra instrument to complement the crushing riffs of Terrence Hobbs and Doug Cerrito and Mike Smith's crazy drum patterns. The opening "Liege Of Inveracity" and the following title track, especially, are among the most oppressive death metal songs ever. Both tracks demonstrate just how masterful this band was at mixing their aural punishment with equal amounts of musicianship and groove. It's on the stunning "Pierced From Within," however, that Suffo really showed what they could do. If "Effigy" established the band as leaders of the death metal pack, "Pierced" separated them from said pack completely. Death's "Symbolic" and Carcass's "Heartwork" came out the same year, and while those albums are both justly praised as classics neither one is as relentlessly vicious or viscerally impacting as Suffocation's masterpiece was. While "Effigy" was a finely honed killing machine of an album, "Pierced" saw the band refining their approach even further, adding even more reams of complexity to their already potent sound.Perhaps the most notable change on "Pierced" is in Frank's vocals. His throat-scarring grunt from the band's debut was gone, replaced by a vicious, menacing growl that added clarity without sacrificing brutality. The songs themselves became more rhythmically complex and less predictable, with frequent tempo changes and some astonishingly intricate riff structures from Doug and Terrence. Most important of all, though, was the addition of drummer Doug Bohn. His predecessor, Mike Smith, was great himself, but Doug is just a machine, taking every bit of the skill of math metal drummers like Meshuggah's Tomas Haake and Candiria's Kenneth Schalk and applying it to death metal. Blastbeats, double-bass, you name it: Doug did it, and in a creative and unpredictable manner as well. I don't think I've ever heard another drummer make use of dynamics as well as Doug did here, varying his assault constantly for some of the most endlessly fascinating drumwork these ears have heard. Not even to mention, Chris Richards's bass lines were heavy enough to shake houses at their foundations.I'd write a long conclusion to this review right now, but I have to get back to work. So to sum up: this albums are great, and this package is essential for anyone looking to discover Suffocation. So stop reading and pick it up now!"

F*CK YES!!!

WelcomeTheAbyss | The Flatlands | 02/15/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Two brutal technical death metal masterworks for the price of one(both being EXTREMELY hard to get now)??? This has got to be any metalhead's wet dream. This is also the best thing Roadrunner has done within the past ten years (especially since they started sucking in the mid 90's-present), although they could of done a lot better on the layout and included the lyrics in the booklet(keep in mind, i'm reviewing the music, not the format of it). With that said 'Effigy of the forgotten' and 'Pierced from Within' are both equally brilliant technical slabs of brutal death metal and are still unmatchable in their vision and ferocity today! It's just that it all flows together so well, organic sounding in the way that none of it sounds forced and almost amorphous in the way they shift back and forth between various tempos. I must also note that Frank Mullen is probably my favorite death metal vocalist: bar none. Some personal favorites from both albums include "Infecting the crypts", "Liege of Inveracity","Thrones of blood","Suspended in Tribulation", and "Torn into Enthrallment" but hell, they're all good rip-roaring death metal fun, so either get this Roadrunner release(Still sucks that your hard earned money goes to such a now-crappy label) or find the cd's seperate offline it's well worth it!



P.S. They're AMAZING live!"