Breeding the Spawn -vs- The Erosion of Sanity

Had this been a challenge between the debut albums of each band, I would have went with Suffocation tenfold. As it is, Suffocation's second album ended up being a major letdown while Gorguts, a band that I wasn't (and to some extent, still am not) very into, stepped up their game a bit with the release of 93's 'The Erosion of Sanity'.

Gorguts, I always felt, was just another run o' the mill Death clone (of course all that would drastically fucking change with the release of Obscura!) that ultimately failed to reel me in. Suffocation, however, blew the fucking door off the hinges in terms of pushing the boundaries of how brutal a death metal band could be.

Oddly, both Suffocation's and Gorguts sophomore albums actually sound more than a bit similar to one another, stylistically. Both see each band evolving technically whilst shedding much of the more accessible elements of their debuts. The glaring difference is that with Gorguts it actually works, for the most part, while 'Breeding the Spawn' ultimately turned out to be and unbelievable mess. Everything on that album sounds so horribly out of place, not to mention as if it were released before the band's debut. Gorguts, on the other hand, manages to use their newfound technical agility to make things sound a little bit more interesting than the bulk of material found on 'Considered Dead', though they do come close, more than once, to going off the deep end of self indulgent tangents, a trait over-employed by musicians seeking to one-up themselves.

In the end, I have to give Gorguts the upper hand here. While 'Breeding the Spawn' is unquestionably a few staggering steps backwards (a mistake the band would remedy with the release of album number three, 'Pierced from Within'), Gorguts continued trudging on in the right direction while upping the ante a bit in terms of their newfound technical revelations.  

If there was one thing that both bands were dead even on, it would be the astonishingly killer artwork that adorns each album, courtesy of death metal go-to guy, Dan Seagrave. Between the both of them, it's practically impossible to choose, though if I had a gun to my head I just might have to go with 'The Erosion of Sanity', yet again.

Winner: Gorguts - The Erosion of Sanity