Review Summary: Blood Oath gives you a temporary dose of brutality.
Suffocation is a band that along with Cannibal Corpse and Deicide have been in the Death Metal subgenre since the beginning. The band has experienced some line-up changes and has released six studio albums [Blood Oath included] and two EPs. Three years since their self-entitled the band has released what is claimed to be the oath all members took when initiating the band, Blood Oath.
Any listener of Suffocation will find all the familiarities of this album. It contains Mullen’s signature vocals, Hobb’s intrinsic riffs and eerie solo melodies, and Smith’s famous Smith Blasts. The songs themselves have a sophisticated sense of composition and blend well together. As an added bonus, a rerecording of Marital Decimation from Breeding the Spawn has been included. The superiority between the two versions is entirely up to the listener; whether you’d prefer the clean production and slightly touched vocals or the raw, static feel of the original.
While this sounds fantastic, you may begin to wonder how this could be a flaw. As you listen to the album you start on the title track, but after several tracks you realize that you’ve passed through several of them to be halfway through the album. The songs do little to different themselves from each other. Some do start with a specific opening or drum solo, but it again does little to different from the others. It is the feeling that you’ve heard this material sometime before that is the flaw. It lacks the specialty that the band’s previous efforts had and ultimately makes this one feel generic and redundant.
It is a good, well done album and easily their best since the departure of rhythm guitarist Doug Cerrito, but is forgettable. Fans of Suffocation and those seeking brutality in their music will want to give this several spins. For those who are new this band should start somewhere else.
