Brutal Technical Death Metal begins and ends with Suffocation.
Full stop.
The titans of industry have had a stranglehold on the masses for decades now. Hymns From The Apocrypha (Nuclear Blast Records) is simply a six-years-in-the-waiting culmination of a desire to continue to reign supreme. Even with the half-decade wait between records, any amount of time between Suffocation releases feels like an eternity.
Newcomer Ricky Myers has slotted in painlessly, allowing for the record to nestle comfortably into the New York-based outfit’s illustrious discography.
Clocking in at over forty minutes (with but one song running under four), the record is bursting at the seams with tremolo-blasted solos and devastating drum blasts. The complexities of the songs lie within the eye-watering layers upon layers of engineered depth and variety.
It’s a reminder nobody needed that it’s Suffocation at the top and everyone else is simply playing catch-up.
“Perpetual Deception” especially highlights each key instrument simultaneously, figuratively slowing down for each player to thrive even though a layperson would hear the track as a massive wall of sped-up sound.
Stepping in for longtimer Frank Mullen, Myers’s full-throated, gravel grunts are as authoritative as they are confident. A casual Suffocation fan (do those even exist?) wouldn’t even notice a difference.
“Embrace The Suffering” lures you in with an all-hands-on-deck, world-beating tempo and keeps you engaged with emergency-siren finger tapping. There is no sign of these legends slowing down, rhythmically or literally.
Remarkably, Hymns contains nine songs that each have enough depth to feel like its own separate EP, which is a blessing if fans are to wait longer than usual for full lengths to drop.
Suffocation’s consistency only continues as the collective enters its fourth decade. Not only is this group the best foundation for tech death; with them still churning out instant classics, no one else is even in the conversation.
Buy the album here:
9 / 10
MATT COOK