Suffocation - Pinnacle of Bedlam (2013)

Honestly, I stopped "keepin' it real" with Suffo after 'Pierced From Within'. It was around that time that I started to grow tired of bands that go off on  mindless technical tangents with a couple of out of place breakdowns thrown in to sate the "brutal/slam" mongoloids. Admittedly I was happy to once again hear a Suffo album done up with a great production job after the catastrophic mess that was 'Breeding the Spawn' (no amount of internet hipsters could ever convince me that that album is anything other than a stagnant pile of shit), but overall I was getting weary of their particular brand of death metal.

Throughout the years since 'PFW', the band broke up, came back and released a slew of albums, none of which really sounded all that spectacular. Sure, I guess you could say that the band stayed true to their style but that approach grew tiresome to me a long time ago.

Pinnacle of Bedlam is Suffo doing Suffo in a nutshell. The one big difference here is that they've reigned in a lot of the more drawn out aspects of their approach and tidied things up a bit. The songs are much shorter and snappier, which is great, as much of the wayward feel that lost me on previous albums is cut short and dare I say the end result is catchier and more straight to the point. Believe me, the band tries to throw in as much as they can for most of the album but it is indeed refreshing to see much of the excess fat carved away.

There are also some acoustic sections that bring to mind 'Pierced From Within' as well as some string bends and harmonics that one wouldn't normally equate with Suffocation. I'm glad to hear the band branching out and incorporating a few new elements into their sound, though as previously mentioned, this is still pretty much Suffocation 101.

Overall, while this is not a bad album by any stretch, it's just not really my thing, though I'll gladly steer anyone into this particular style of metal in its direction.