Suffer - Global Warming
Review: The simpler the song, the fewer divisions it has, and correspondingly, the less numerical change occurs in its riffs; the simplest song is a repeated note. In making death metal of this nature, one has to avoid being boring and being too anthemic, at which point the music begins to resemble a very angry radio commercial. With the first lengthy EP from Suffer, we hear a style of open and rhythmic death metal that uses balanced intervals to create a cyclic laddering effect, bouncing between chords to let vocal emphasize fill in the offbeats.
It is remarkably effective in making the music memorable in the simplest sense, that of having what we call "hook" or enough unfulfilled tonal and rhythmic expectation to linger in the mind as it tries to chew the data and find the answer - in fact, it is remarkably like a series of small mysteries that are not symmetrically resolved. The hoarse roar of vocals nails this rhythm too much to not be irritating, and many of these riffs are elemental in the Deathstrike/Sodom school to the point that they do not age well; however, on a compositional level, this band create listenable and sometimes powerful songs out of these basic pieces.
Bold riffs avalanche from consistent rhythms into breakaway phrases that fluidly circumnavigate the tonal pattern into which they eventually slam, instants before the entire band like a rising pterodactyl soars. Simple as it may be, it is effective, and in the hybrid style of Swedish death metal interpreted with the influence of heavy downstrum American death metal, this rhythmic and pugilistic band demonstrates power.