Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Suffocation and the Roots of Brutal Death

For good reasons Slam-Minded tends to focus on newer bands and newer releases. If we just talked about old material, the blog would get stale fast. However, I think occasionally it is worth revisiting the classics and the founders of a genre. Not only does this remind you of what makes the music great, it also means you are only listening to premium music. This is what I've been doing recently (as you can see, no reviews for a couple weeks), but I wanted to share my thoughts about probably the most important band for Brutal Death: Suffocation.

Suffocation pretty much single-handedly took death metal from heavier thrash metal and melodic stuff like Morbid Angel and the Swedish scene, and created the path of percussive, rhythmic, brutal death metal that we know and love today. No disrespect to those other bands, but I personally feel that the path Suffocation created is the best, and closest to what I feel is great about death metal. Listen to songs like "Infecting the Crypts" and "Liege of Inveracity" and you can see the seeds of slam death that would sprout a little less than a decade later. If you enjoy all the new bands that we write about here, then you owe Suffocation a debt of gratitude. I'm sure almost every reader of this blog has heard Suffocation, but I encourage you to go back and remember how amazing these guys were and are.

9 comments:

Desanusor said...

I must add that this band is allways kicking asses on stage I saw them 5 times and will I like their music im not a fan of them on cd but in live it's fucking huge !

Cerebral Reviewment said...

Word. So true. Human Waste! Support the scene and it's pioneers!

Icky said...

One of the true greats, for sure. Oh - and I dig this blog ALOT. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Awesome! Thanks for giving one of my favorite bands of all time their due! Suffocation helped me get into the more brutal stuff all those years ago and for that I owe them much gratitude! Also, as the other commenters said, keep up the great work on this awesome blog!

Anonymous said...

favorite death metal band of all time.

Anonymous said...

lets get some more reviews guys! i've been missing my weekly dose of BDM!

Nick Adams said...

Don't worry, you'll get some soon! My computer had a meltdown so my only internet access for the past two weeks has been at the library. Just got a new one yesterday, so I should have a review up by the end of this weekend.

Torturor said...

Effigy Of The Forgotten is a classic but let's not overlook the importance of Deicide. Their self titled was out a year earlier and every bit a brutal. Hail Scott Burns!

Anonymous said...

While Deicide is important to the death metal scene, they branched in different directions. Deicide has more of a sinister Satanic sound, while Suffocation has a much more brutal sound. Both pioneers nonetheless.