Vitriol – Suffer & Become
Release Date: 26th January 2024
Label: Century Media
Bandcamp
Genre: Technical Death Metal
FFO: First Fragment, Cattle Decapitation, Hate Eternal, Cryptopsy.
Review By: Jeff Finch
I hate a love hate relationship with Tech Death; on the one hand, the technical mastery these musicians display is jaw dropping, and the compositions they create are awe-inspiring. On the other hand, there is an endless supply of tech death that focuses on mindless wankery, seemingly just to prove how talented they are, enjoyability be damned. For anyone that feels the same way, fear not, for Vitriol is not here to merely impress you with their technical skill, they are here to cave in your chest cavity with some top tier death metal that just happens to be technically masterful.
Now, like most tech death bands, Vitriol likes speed, and throughout the course of this album, we are simply pummeled with lightning quick compositions that change tempo and time signatures before a listener is even able to discern that something has changed. Inhumanely paced riffs, machine gun drumming, fretboard freneticism from the bassist, and a vocalist who can shriek high and growl low, Vitriol brings it all to the table and manages to sound like a band overflowing with energy and ferocity. They groove, they dazzle, they impress, and they never once waver in their intensity; opener Shame and Its Afterbirth is rife with melody, killer guitar work, and, of course, speed, while follow up The Flowers of Sadism leans into some slower groove, a welcome variety to the mix, even though we’re a mere handful of minutes in.
Tracks like The Isolating Life of Learning Another pack a ferocious punch, the slower riffs are much heavier, the chug is almost a breakdown, given the cacophonous chaos of the music surrounding it, especially the black metal transition at about the halfway point of the track, where listeners are beat mercilessly with tremolo riffs, blast beats, and a shriek that would make any Norwegian proud, all preceding a brilliant guitar solo that has something a lot of tech death bands lack: soul. In staying with this ferocity, the haunting shrieks and high screams of Weaponized Loss make for an epic, borderline uncomfortable listen, as the vocalist, over the pure percussive insanity, sounds as though his soul is trying to escape through his vocal cords. It’s a palpable desperation spewing forth, as if the only way to keep going is to match the intensity of the music, finally breaking through to a tempo downshift into some deeply punishing death metal, the bass oozing from the speakers, treating listeners to thick, oppressive riffing.
The band sounds nearly unhinged at points, like if they slow down or quiet down in any capacity, they’re bound to blow up, which is why the percussion in the song I Am Every Enemy is so remarkably memorable: the snare, which sounds like a tin-can at this juncture, is being bludgeoned with such intense violence it sounds as though the drummer is trying to physically remove it from the kit merely by striking it, just an unbridled fury that somehow manages to stick out among the maelstrom, a testament to the technical ability of the drummer and the power contained therein.
While the vast majority of this album is simply incredible work, one thing that does tend to wear down a listener is the pace at which everything comes at us; sure, there are moments on this record that slow down for us to groove, but it’s no shock that the vast majority comes at us like a runaway freight train, and its during those long haul listens, straight through the album, that exhaustion can start to set in. So many notes, so many shifts, so much maelstrom and chaos; eventually it starts to wear a listener down, like a 12 round boxing match with nothing but body blows. It’s no dealbreaker, but it’s something that many a tech-death listener is probably familiar with.
Having said that, though, what Vitriol does with Suffer & Become is impressive; throughout the course of these ten tracks, the band sounds like pure technical death metal, brutal death metal, black metal, and just straight up death metal. While the uninformed may think I just said the same thing three or four different times, listeners know that pulling off several related, but inherently different, genres over the course of an album is an awe-inspiring feat. The band is not afraid to test themselves, and in each, it’s clear they’ve put forth maximum effort. We’re only in January, but Vitriol has already dropped what will likely be one of the heaviest records of 2024.
(4 / 5)
