Susperia - Attitude

November 1, 2009

Reviewer: Ilmarinen

So how the hell do you make a good heavy metal album?
Well, you can take the path well traveled. Namely, you can take 80's sensibilities and wrap them up in modern production or you can take modern sensibilities and wrap them up in 80's sound. Either way it's going to be hailed as music for the new millennium that "respects its roots", or, in other words, knows who the daddy is. This approach is not dissimilar from inbreeding. And because of it, everything is beginning to sound like a copy of a copy of a copy, progressively declining in quality. There is another way of course. It has to do with memory, or better yet, remembering. Remembering what heavy metal is or any good music for that matter. Heavy metal is not "Black Sabbath" or "Slayer" or any other hyper influential band that cleared the path and set the trends. Heavy metal is music. Remember that word? Forget the genre, remember where it came from. Music. And what is music if not an emotion.

As long as a musician is driven by an emotion he cannot fail; maybe in the eyes of others, but never as an artist. It is an influence-agnostic drive, even if the edges are embroidered with the heroes of the past, the middle is an authentic original. That's what made it unique in the 70's, that's what made bands like Slayer and Metallica unique in the 80's, that's what made Morbid Angel great in the 90's, and that is what hopefully is going to make Susperia the "it" band of this decade as well.

So how exactly do you describe a band that just "gets it right"? Their sound is tightly controlled energy, but that is said of countless bands. There is no musical meandering here. The songs are technically proficient but they also know when the end comes. This is not to say they are circumscribed bursts of chaos à la Anal Cunt that serve virtually no purpose outside of shock value. These guys know how to write good songs that consistently deliver.

Too often a pitfall of a band is writing a creative intro and then lapsing into a by-the-numbers verse-chorus-bridge-solo before delivering a quirky outro. The listener is inevitably left with a "meh" feeling that, given enough time, metastasizes into a reasonable sense of devotion when the song "grows" on him. Pop music operates on a similar concept, but I digress... Each tune on this album has a distinct personality. Think Metallica's Master of Puppets, think Judas Priest's Painkiller. Whatever. This is an album rich with emotion and generous in its musical expression. This album does not need to "grow" on you. Every song on Attitude has something to offer, and if you are not a taker, so be it, but don't say they didn't try. The songs here are pleasantly technical, but they are not lost in their own virtuosity to a point where they become an exercise in music theory. Aggressive instrumental layering is there as well but its presence is not overwhelming. An equilibrium between instrumental prowess and vocal emphasis triumphs on this album in a way that is completely unique in this bleak decade of vocal deconstructionism.

And the songs, my god, the songs. An honest to goodness record of SONGS here. When was the last time you cared about a song on a thrash/dm/mdm type album? You listened to the music and, consistent with modern conditioning, you treated the vocals as "just another instrument". When was the last time a voice actually mattered the way it did on Slayer's South of Heaven, or Metallica's Master of Puppets? When is the last time you listened to an album that found that elusive precious balance between rhythm and vocal lines? Look no further. There is a sense of lyricism here, a feel of poetry beneath the violence. Testament's Chuck Billy readily comes to mind, who, I contest, has one of the best suited vocals for heavy metal, and to whom, Susperia's vocalist bears a striking and flattering similarity.

It is a quality that is sorely missing from too many bands nowadays, and worst of all, apparently not missed. It's almost as if people have become so anesthetized to graceless mutterings and growlings that near blindly plow on towards an outro that this essential quality simply dissolved in entropy. Never mind entropy, Susperia is here to push the bastard back a bit! And they got a record of wonderfully violent sing-along thrash anthems just for you!

Thrash? Melodic Death? Who cares. Just listen to the god damned record. Crank it up and jump around. Metal doesn't get much better than this.

Release Date: May 19th, 2009
Label: Candlelight Records

TRACK LISTING

1.  The Urge
2.  Live My Dream
3.  Attitude
4.  Elegy And Suffering
5.  Sick Bastard
6.  Another Turn
7.  Mr. Stranger
8.  Character Flaw
9.  The One After All

Total playing time: 36:46

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