Suffocation @ Colchester Arts Centre (2024)

22 Jun, 2024

19/06/2024

Jøtnarr

They honestly sounded better than I remembered their music being, but then, I'd only heard their 2015 release, Burn and Bury, closer to the time of it having come out... I honestly don't recall how I'd initially heard of them, but it would've presumably been from either being in a band around 2013-14 and hearing of other kinda underground metal bands between East London and Essex, that or I have a gut feeling I heard about them playing a show or shows with Bast or something. This band are the only band I know of that's local to Colchester as far as my memory is concerned.

Listening back to bits of Burn and Bury though, and now on their 2023 EP Rotten Fucking Planet, it doesn't sound to me like much has changed in their sound aside from higher production values and harder crust leanings. Even though they sounded pretty good live, I could tell the music was still super samey, at least for my liking, and that's something I don't really like about more modern Crust Punk (and adjacent) stuff in general anyway. In hindsight, I'm come to appreciate the song 'Sunless', basically the sole song from Burn and Bury that I enjoy throughout, as if I recall correctly, they ended their set here with that song.

Okay/10

Distant

I made the assumption that this band was one of those modern Deathcore sorta bands. Turned out I was right on the money with that, and not only that, they're like... borderline slamcore and what people would call "downtempo deathcore"... Ugh. I'm not gonna pretend as if I didn't go out of my way to see Black Tongue live in the past and that I used to enjoy their music and all. They were and are better than this, I still think so, not that it accounts for much. The music was kinda like... idk, a bit like a Brand of Sacrifice or Within Destruction or whatever, plus more of a slammy / "downtempo deathcore" sorta edge. As soon as I heard those Mitch Lucker-esque vocals, I dipped and headed straight for the back of the venue. Literally every passable slam or breakdown was followed up by a dogshit slam or breakdown, and more often than not followed by another one. The fucking overly reverbed snare hits during those breakdowns almost made me spit out my drink in poorly repressed laughter more than once.

The saddest thing is that, from what I could tell from the back, they probably garnered a bigger crowd than Suffocation themselves, which is just depressing honestly. Awful. And they sounded to me like a parody I would make of slam deathcore, "downtempo deathcore", and the song Purgatory by Despised Icon to make fun of how fucking dogshit I find all of that to be. I can't imagine ever listening to Suicide Silence and being like "yes! yes!!! I want to hear more stuff like this, but with more obnoxious breakdowns and shit!!", but I suspect I'm in the minority there.

I will admit I found the whole James Bond chord intro thing a little funny though.

2/10

Suffocation

Glad I got a second chance to see Suffocation this year, because I missed them when they were originally touring England earlier this year. Suffice to say, making a mini holiday out of going to see them in Colchester was a more appealing idea to me than going to London for a concert again. Good setlist too, aside from the inclusion of 'Clarity Through Deprivation'. The Pierced and Effigy tracks went especially hard live. The Hymns From the Apocrypha tracks were really fun too! 'Seraphim Enslavement' might be my least favourite from the album, though I still enjoy it, but the title track from that album is my favourite, and 'Perpetual Deception' in particular also has some awesome shit going on as well.

I'm not sure if it was someone at the mixing desk or if it was a decision from within the band themselves, but those "overly reverbed snare hits" from Distant's set made their way onto Suffocation's set as well, which is just more distracting than anything else, instead of laughable in the context of Distant's stereotypical tryhard deathcore breakdowns, especially when they're loud enough to drown out the rest of the music and happen as often as they did on Suffocation's set even. "Surely you have a problem with bassdrops too then?" Similar principle I suppose, although as far as Suffocation are concerned, I fuck with them, and the song 'Pierced From Within' wouldn't quite be the same without them I reckon.

They were very good!/10

#seen live #suffocation