The Earliest Blackened Death Metal - "Effigy of the Forgotten" Review (100%)
I'm constantly surprised at the number of metalheads that don't recognize Suffocation, and their 1991 debut Effigy of the Forgotten most of all, as a primary influence on the rising Norwegian black metal scene, at least as much as Bathory, Incantation, Hellhammer and Sodom.
Aside from Burzum and maybe Darkthrone - the former because of its uniqueness and later being mostly influenced by Bathory and, ironically, Burzum - there would be no black metal genre as we know it without Effigy of the Forgotten. You read that right, without this album there is no De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, no Nemesis Divina, no Memento Mori, no Pure Holocaust, no Birth of a Cursed Elysium, and certainly no In the Nightside Eclipse (perhaps the most Suffocation-inspired of all second wave releases).
This refusal to acknowledge Suffocation's influence comes from both an ignorance of Suffocation's music and a misunderstanding of their role in black metal.
First, the ignorance of Suffocation's music. When people hear "Suffocation", they think of breakdowns, slams, and every shit sub-genre influenced by their music - deathcore, slam death metal, brutal death metal, deathgrind, etc.
But a lot of bands have spawned "bastard children" and few of them are held responsible for it the way we do with Suffocation. Burzum and Phantom birthed the DSBM bedroom gimmick and the war metal genre, respectively, yet no sane person would claim that Varg Vikernes is somehow "responsible" for the shit music of Nargaroth.
Also, the music of the imitators - while superficially similar to that of their influences - has nothing to do with what their inspirations played. Likewise, Suffocation "inspired" deathcore bands have nothing to do with Suffocation.
The music of Suffocation is the music of Suffocation, and needs to be judged as such. Not by whatever shit is allegedly "influenced" by it.
The Earliest Blackened Death Metal
Now for the way Suffocation is misunderstood, I will attempt to explain.
When people hear "Suffocation" they think "breakdown", in the same way people will think "blasting" when they hear "Marduk", or "disturbing atmosphere" when they hear "Phantom".
And when they think of "breakdown", they will inevitably envision those deathcore and/or nu metal bands that content themselves with slamming the same two or three power chords in order to create a "groovy" riff that last for the entire verse (Pantera), or sometimes the entire song (Watain).
Basically, ultra-simplistic rhythmic music for brainless "moshing" and moronic "headbanging".
But Suffocation never did that. Suffocation never played rhythmic music for rhythm's sake, no more than they ever wrote "brutal" songs for the sake of brutality.
On the contrary - and this is where Suffocation becomes a crucial influence on the Norwegian black metal scene - Suffocation always wrote melodically coherent and harmonically progressive compositions, where rhythm was used to accent the underlying melody, rather than detract from it.
This subtlety was lost on modern deathcore bands, that only copied Suffocation's basic rhythms, but it wasn't lost on the black metal scene despite them forgoing the rhythmic breakdowns in favour of more fluid tremolo leads.
Before Effigy of the Forgotten, it was customary for speed metal bands - even those considered proto-black/"first wave black metal" like Sodom - to separate the hard rhythmic verse sections with the melodic development of motifs and themes during the chorus.
It's only after Suffocation decided to use rhythm concurrently with melodic motifs and thematic development, that the entire concept of atmosphere was born.
Truth is, Suffocation is absolutely influential to Norwegian black metal, and an album like In the Nightside Eclipse could never have seen the light of day had Suffocation not laid the foundations some three years prior with Effigy of the Forgotten.
This is the earliest blackened death metal album, one that continues to influence both the black metal and death metal genres to this day. Just listen to some of the rhythmic work on albums like Verminlust and tell me Suffocation weren't more than an influence, a fundamental necessity on par with Hellhammer's Apocalyptic Raids and Slayer's Hell Awaits.
Effigy of the Forgotten score: 100/100.
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