Suffocation + Annotations of an Autopsy @ Birmingham Academy 2, 2nd April 2010
In only a few short weeks since the hardened deathsters of Birmingham were treated to DM overlords Obituary, it was time for yet another set of genre originators to drop by the Academy 2, this time round New Yorkers Suffocation. As with Obituary, they rose to prominence as one of the vanguards of the original DM boom in the early nineties, boasting matching Morrisound production jobs and Roadrunner record deals. I certainly can’t remember the last time they played Brum, so was anticipating a set of some of the most identifiable and influential Death Metal in front of a packed house, especially given that we were right at the start of a bank holiday weekend. One out of two isn’t bad I suppose.
Having arrived, cursing my time-keeping as Fleshgod Apocalypse were finishing their set, it was left to Nervecell to open proceedings for my tardy (no Obituary pun intended) self. With no prior knowledge of the band, by the end of their set they had won over the majority of their crowd with their muscular, thrash-influenced Death Metal and easy-going charm.
With good-natured, bear-like frontman James Khazaal at the helm, his baiting of the crowd before ‘Existence Ceased’ to “mosh-pit, circle-pit, wall of death, sex or blowjob” resulted in none of them actually transpiring, although the sea of mass headbanging it induced was just as satisfying and a damn slight less messy too. Leading into a cover of Bolt Thrower’s ‘Where Next to Conquer’ as a follow-up was an inspired choice, not least due to the close local affinity with Coventry’s favourite war machines that Birmingham crowds always display.
Being one of only a handful of death metal acts hailing from Dubai — and that’s possibly being generous — Nervecell have enough of an identity and are accessible and engaging enough to transcend any geographical boundaries, and given time will be able to build on the promise shown here tonight. They certainly seemed to make a lot of new friends.
Having established themselves as possibly the UK’s leading lights in the vastly over-populated Deathcore scene, Lowestoft’s Annotations Of An Autopsy were main support for this tour, having recently released their second full-length, ‘A Reign of Darkness’ through global metal uberpower Nuclear Blast. Given the two-year gap between the latest album and it’s predecessor, ‘Before The Throne of Infection’, AOAA have refined their sound, shaving away at the more generic elements of the debut, adding atmosphere to a more refined, mature approach to songwriting, with hints of Morbid Angel-eque technicality underpinning their burly slams.
A murky sound meant that a lot of their more insiduous, less obvious technicalities weren’t as sharp as they could have been, thus rendering the shape of their set to a process of beatdown — riff — beatdown — riff, and this percieved sense of formulaicism turned them off to a number of the crowd, especially to a lot of the old guard here, who saw AOAA as harbingers of this most ‘false’ of stylistic subgenres.
That said, there was much to be impressed by, with the aforementioned breakdowns so huge and so beefy it seemed that their mosh parts were slowly being pulled inside out and dragged backwards through the passage of time. The cramped stage also meant that whatever stage presence the band possess wasn’t able to be fully demonstrated on this outing, although with both the bassist and drummer taking turns to spit mists of water under the emerald lighting it lent proceedings a bizarrely (wrestling reference alert)Great Muta-esque air.
The appearance of vocalist Big Chocolate (honest) from opening band Burning the Masses for a rip through ‘Born Dead’ with twin guttural vocals was a highlight, as was the closing romp through breakout number ‘Sludge City’. Sadly, there was an unmistakable sense of a missed opportunity for Annotations, although whether the blame is to be laid at the door of their particular sound mix, a slightly unforgiving crowd or just a sense of wrong place, wrong time is still open for discussion.
Despite stylistically operating from different realms of the death metal spectrum as their DM brethren in Obituary, comparisons between the two bands were nagging and unrelenting, if for no reason other than the fact they are two originators of Death Metal who have recently played in Birmingham. The most notable difference I drew from the band was the level of influenc e that Suffocation currently hold over most of the most popular contemporary DM bands, the much-maligned sub-genre of Deathcore in particular. Having only been a relatively recent convert to the back catalogue of Suffocation, I nevertheless only needed a brief, cursory listen to their material to establish why a Suffocation T-shirt as as de rigeur as a New Era baseball cap and huge dangling flesh tunnels to the Deathcore fanbase.
In a nutshell, everything that is being celebrated by Deathcore fans at present, was for the most part done before back in the early nineties, from their debut album, ‘Effigy of the Forgotten’. Razor-sharp, aggressively tremelo-picked guitar work; guttural vocals and of course, The Slam. Erroneously assuming that The Slam was a facet of latter-day death metallers, having been influenced by the prolifiteration of hardcore bands in recent times, I was pleasantly surprised to realise that this had in fact been used as far back as the first song on their first full-lengther back in 1991. It was this track, ‘Liege of Invaracity’ that opened the set tonight, which then proceeded to trawl through a careers worth of quality death metal, so impressive in its consistent brutality.
Apart from the ongoing game of spot-the-influence, most enjoyment was to be gained by watching the band, the members of which all have to be approaching their forties, putting on a show with great energy and a zest that would put most of the bands that followed in their wake (some nearly twenty years later) to shame with the level of physical expenditure put in. Indeed, long-standing guitarist Terrance Hobbs was headbanging with such gusto it appeared he was actually trying to shake his dreadlocks free, as if a particularly angry, vampiric squid had attached itself to his head moments before he took to the stage.
Despite owning a pair of lungs seemingly borrowed from a particularly angry lion, vocalist Frank Mullen was one of the more affable frontmen operating within DM today, with the song introductions to ‘Entrails of You’ (explaining a desire to wrap himself within the loving embrace of his girlfriend. Well, her entrails at least) and ‘Breeding the Spawn’ (giving props to serial killers for getting off their couch and actually making something of their lives) raised mass chuckles as well as roars of approval for the songs in question.
The only real low point was the unfortunate number in attendance, certainly a sizable drop down from the Obituary turnout, and I certainly wouldn’t imagine those absent tonight were attending their local Good Friday church service. Still, the pleasure was all ours. With equally warm receptions afforded numbers both old and new, from tonight’s evidence Suffocation are as devastating now as they have ever been. Furthermore, within the current renaissance period of their contemporaries reappropriating their signature sound for a new generation (much in the same way that the vast majority of boom-era metalcore band seemingly worshipped at the altar of At The Gates alone), they can enjoy basking in their recently-appointed status as genre ground-breakers. It’s the least they deserve from a performance as – to complete the pun quota for the review — breathtaking as this.
Review – Duncan Wilkins
Photos – Steve Gerrard