Suffer Yourself Contort Death and Doom Metal Around an "Axis of Tortures" (Early Album Stream)
Suffer Yourself's new album Axis of Tortures is surprisingly mathematical in concept. To summarize, the band proposes that each human existence can be plotted as a point within a four-dimensional space with regards to different types of suffering. This makes a certain amount of sense, actually--and there had to be multiple axes at play on their punishing new volume in order to explain all the twists and turns it delivers. The Polish death/doom band oscillate between both malevolent and foreboding atmospheres, and they ratchet the tempo up and down like a particularly sadistic inquisitor might experiment with thumbscrews. It makes for a dynamic experience, even with a permanent, overarching theme of suffering.
Given its somewhat highbrow concept, there's a surprising amount of ass-beating, plain-and-simple death metal within Axis of Tortures. In between some extremely poignant and baleful funeral doom passages, you'll find riffs utterly devoid of brain activity hellbent on smashing spinal columns -- it's a glorious contrast. The album's emotional peaks might reside in the doomier parts, where more parseable (though often amazingly deranged) vocals ask painfully sincere questions, but the sheer ignorance found elsewhere massively amplifies the record's energy. To use a torture analogy, this album is one part The Pit and the Pendulum and one part some masked guy just going to town on a poor bastard's kneecaps. The latter might not be literature-worthy, but you can't argue with the results. We're streaming the whole album below before it releases Friday.
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Axis of Tortures releases September 22nd via Aesthetic Death.
