Extreme Album of the Week #6, Pierced from Within by Suffocation, (1995, Roadrunner)

Extreme Album of theweek is a feature where I will be giving thoughts and impressions on an extrememusic classic that I have not heard at length. I will research these albumsheavily as I listen, and attempt to educate as well as reflect on the nature ofthese albums .Last week I looked at Beneath the Remains. This week I follow producer Scott Burns forthe second  time to the last album by theoriginal lineup of NYC Death Metal legends Suffocation.

Listening to Suffocation’s Pierced from Within is kind of like being dunked at a witch trial,simultaneously painful and refreshing. I attempted to sit through this albumyears ago and couldn’t do it—it was just so oppressive! The guitars are low,dark, and fast, with so many notes per second it boggles the mind. The songstructures make absolutely no logical sense. Every sound is made with theexpress purpose of demolishing the listener’s cranium.

This is truly brutal technical death metal, and it standsand falls by the genre itself. Personally, I loved it. The riffs lack thepunchy nature of, say, Metallica, but make up for lack of catchiness with sheertechnical skill. The album is almost completely composed using high speedpicking and various rapid stop-and-start time signature changes. Some of these techniqueswere borrowed from Suffocation’s European cousins: tremolo picking from blackmetal bands, and buzzsaw distortion from Entombed. The sound is a bit morebalanced than those groups, however, probably due to Scott Burns’ still-greatmix work. The bass is clearly audible and adds substance to the albumsgalloping low end, which nowadays is a rarity. Best of all, Through the guitarsmaintain a chaotic buzz the individual notes, even on the fastest riffs (“Depthsof Depravity”) are clearly audible. The sound is thick, meaty, and vibrant inits darkness.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Pierced from Within is its place in thehistory of death metal. After giving the album two spins I seriously pondereddeleting most of the so-called modern death metal and deathcore from my harddrive. The album still sounds modern and cutting edge after nearly fifteenyears, which reflects pretty badly on death metal as a genre for not continuingto grow and learn from Suffocation’s example, not just parrot their techniques.Simultaneously, the influence of bands like Slayer and Morbid angel are readilyapparent in the rhythm department—Suffocation use those two band’s gallopstyles almost exclusively at high speeds, the album really takes on a life ofits own when they settle into slower groves and let the riffs breathe majestyout of the speakers.

Perhaps the best thing about the album is, unlike so manyrecords, it actually gets better as the album goes on, not worse. The advantagesof being completely anti-commercial in sound, I suppose. The first three songsestablish the general sound of Suffocation. By the time “Suspended in Tributlation,”rolls around, the energy is still ramping up, and maintains that high for its entiresix-and-a-half minute duration. The intro to highlight track “Torn intoEnthrallment" is the midway point, and a breath of gorgeous melody beforethe shifting rhythms only get less believable. After that, every song justimproves until closer "Breeding the Spawn," but it’s a re-recordingof their previous album’s title track, so I’ll forgive it.

If there’s any weaknesses on the album they’re so nitpickyas to be rendered worthless. Suffocation even manage to breathe some vitalityinto the normally boring lyrics that plague death metal:

Vanish into the unseen origins ofinfinity.
A pleasant swim in the seas of dormant ecstacy.
A state of being I could spend with all of eternity.
Suspended above the remains of what I used to be.

It’s all quite visceral and descriptive, despite the vocaldelivery failing to convey the depth. Such is death metal, though.

In the end, maybe the most crushing moment of the wholealbum was the five seconds after it ended, when silence crashed into the voidleft by the music and I could only take a deep breath. Exhale.

“Wow. That was a good album.”

Suffocation broke upsoon after, but re-formed with an altered lineup in the new millennium. Theirself-titled comeback album is considered a worthy successor to Pierced fromWithin. Next week will be our final weekwith Scott Burns as we follow himto a commercial failure, but a huge criticalsuccess: Cynic’s debut Focus.