Suffocation - Topic

Suffocation biography 2017

By Chris Dick

A good four years separate rager Pinnacle of Bedlam from new killer Of the Dark Light. But it wasn’t always like this. Back in the ‘90s, Suffocation maniacs waited, at most, two years between old and new fixes of New York-styled brutality. Landmark full-length Effigy of the Forgotten was only two years removed from debut EP, Human Waste. Likewise, Breeding the Spawn slayed posers and pretenders a year and a half after Effigy of the Forgotten blueprinted Suffocation into the history books. And Pierced from Within, the wickedest death metal put to tape in the mid-‘90s, slammed fist first into mediocrity and mundanity two years after Breeding the Spawn. Clearly, there were times when Suffocation’s march towards total annihilation was fast and furious.

“There’s a reason we don’t put out records every two years now,” asserts long-time Suffocation guitarist and primary songwriter Terrance Hobbs. “For one, we don’t need to. Two, we tour more now than we did in the early days. And three, we’re no longer in our twenties. We all have lives and families now. Plus, I enjoy writing things and letting them organically mature. For example, I started writing songs for Of the Dark Light right after Pinnacle of Bedlam.”

“Ever since I joined, Suffocation’s been on pretty heavy album and tour cycles,” bassist and lyric writer Derek Boyer agrees. “Sometimes the charisma was there, sometimes it wasn’t. We’d be on the road for a year, and only after that, we’d think about putting songs together. Then, we’d get pulled back on the road. That would delay the album cycle. So, our album cycle went from every two years to every three years to now every four years. Pinnacle of Bedlam came out in 2013. That’s a long time ago.”

Indeed, it was. When Pinnacle of Bedlam hit store shelves in the winter 2013, the world was proverbially on its knees. North Korea was conducting underground nuclear tests, a meteor hit a city in Russia’s South Urals, and Benedict XVI resigned as Pope, the first to intentionally do so since 1294. All this pandemonium occurred the same month Suffocation unfurled Pinnacle of Bedlam unto the world. Harbinger of doom it was. Four years later, the blue marble we inhabit is certifiably nuttier and more violent. It’s the perfect vehicle for Of the Dark Light, a full-length that not only welcomes new members—drummer Eric Morotti and guitarist Charlie Errigo—but also sees Hobbs writing the craziest, cruelest Suffocation material