The Best of Brutal Death Metal - "Breeding the Spawn" Review (100%)
This is Suffocation.
If I had it my way, those three words would be the only "review" every album by this band would ever get.
This. Is. Suffocation.
The rest is redundant commentary.
While it would be deemed "too concise" by autists and "not meeting the standards" by the Metalious admins - or are they in fact autistic themselves? - it tells you everything you need to know. It's not unrealistic to say that probably half of modern death metal, and a quarter of modern black metal is at least partially Suffocation's own semen running down the gutter and into the drain ovaries of the extreme metal scene.
What, you thought the album's name was just a metaphor?
This band's flair for the technical, the chaotic, and the punishing all rolled into one brutal package is simply inhuman, and every release from their debut Effigy of the Forgotten to Pierced from Within... scratch that, every release from their first 1990 demo Reincremated to Pierced from Within showcases this with aplomb, and I'd argue none more so than their most underappreciated album, the sophomore and masterpiece Breeding the Spawn.
Yes, Effigy of the Forgotten was primal and savage while Pierced from Within is probably the heaviest sounding record to ever be released in the history of brutal death metal, but those two masterclasses in gruesome intensity have no bearing on the demonic feeding frenzy that is Breeding the Spawn, an album so vile that it keeps haunting the extreme metal scene to this day as legions of Suffocation clones keep on releasing the same tributes-in-denial that never live up to the haunting madness of this masterpiece.
This is the most atmospheric and evil death metal album ever recorded, the only other album that even comes close to matching Breeding the Spawn's intensity and raw aggression is Incantation's Onward to Golgotha. That's it, there is no other, nor does there need to ever be - much like there will never be a Hvis Lyset Tar Oss part II no matter how hard/many imitators try.
The Best of Brutal Death Metal
And on that note, I know that I used the term "brutal" in the review title and elsewhere, so just to be clear: this album has nothing to do with the "br00tal" death metal scene. And neither does Suffocation.
"Brutal" death metal starts and ends with Suffocation. The "br00tal" death metal scene, on the other hand, was spawned by the seed of Suffocation - there goes that analogy again - and is basically shitty deathcore bands covering each other in their pathetic attempts to imitate Suffocation's superficial aesthetics, while never even understanding the music of their idols.
"Br00tal" death metal is to Suffocation what emo "DSBM" is to Burzum, what caverncore is to Incantation and what Phantaclones are to Phantom.
I know it's really lazy to quote another reviewer, but "N" said it best. When describing the brilliant masterpiece Effigy of the Forgotten - "Suffocation tend to be very clever when it comes to not playing the same riff over and over again - but neither do they shift about at random - instead, they deliberately and carefully mangle whatever they're playing as they go, offering a number of variations of each motif, transforming each riff transition into a theme in and of itself, with a real sense of depth and complexity".
There is nothing else to add.
From the start of Breeding the Spawn, Suffocation take what logically should be an archetypal slamming death metal album, but they present it with a hint of Vermin's black metal angled lunacy, where everything sounds ever so slightly tilted counter-clockwise, and as it progresses the music hurls demonic bass runs that flick the air like a serpent's tongue, before leading into an arrhythmic breakdowns that straddle the line between the kind of slam that Devourment and every Suffaclone would rip off a decade later and an almost Phantom-esque eschewing of logical flow, never entirely sure when the next beat is going to come until it slaps you in the face like a Tyson haymaker.
That's really the whole Breeding the Spawn album in a nutshell: as unpredictable and creative as a cyclone from Hell shearing the Styx in half with the raw power of every depravity from down below. It's a colossal, pulsating meteor storm of nightmares and rotting spleens.
Suffocation is one of the greatest bands on the planet in the realm of death metal, black metal, and all of their related sub-niches.
Breeding the Spawn is simply the best of brutal death metal.
Breeding the Spawn score: 100/100.
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