ALBUM REVIEW: Suffering Sights – When Sanity Becomes Insanity

Chilean old school Death Metal maniacs SUFFERING SIGHTS will deliver their debut album via Burning Coffin Records on September 27th.

No introduction required, the build up of ferocious drum work and diabolical riffing launches us into a firestorm of extremely vicious music that instantly shows what this band is about. Taking us back to a time when Death Metal was still imbued with the aggressive tendencies of its Thrash Metal forebears, bands such as Possessed, Sadistic Intent, Morbid Angel and Necrovore immediately come to mind. Additionally, there is a seemingly blackened edge to the music, especially with the vocal incantations which howl in abyssal fashion atop the multifaceted instrumental inferno. With an insane amount of varied riffing and drumming, the leads thankfully don’t lower the bar, utilising a frenzied and yet clearly thought out style of shredding which isn’t overly melodic, nor is it just sloppy high-speed nonsense. Repugnant and malicious, the violent nature of the bands proto-Death Metal worship is worn proudly on their sleeves and executed in venomous fashion.

Marching further into the pits of hell, Suffering Sights do not relent in their frantically thrashing cacophony of morbidity. Finding endless sources of brilliant ideas and executing them with formidable precision and lustful savagery for the old school, this is a gripping record for its near 40 minutes running time in which we see an endless flow of ferocity produced in a naturally demonic manner. Stringing together such a large array of riffs and blast beats can be a hard task, it is easy to fall into the camp of either being repetitive and dull or fragmented and jarring. Thankfully the organic fieriness of their sound relies on a skeleton of passion and tradition which propels the incendiary music into greatness. Calling forth a sonic apocalypse of true South American Death Metal viscera, the band have outdone the impressive demo on their LP, that is for sure.

This crushing debut album is not just a killer example of early Death Metal worship but is brimming with that South American passion and fire that gives the music its primal and urgent sound. Delivering a devastating blow of extremity such as this it would be easy to rely on derivative cliches, some of which are here but there is no denying Suffering Sights have a personality and character of their own, a violently maniacal one at that.