Vitriol - Suffer & Become (Album Review)
Vitriol – Suffer & Become
Released: January 26th, 2024
Line Up:
Kyle Rasmussen // Vocals/Guitars
Adam Roethlisberger // Bass/Vocals
Stephen Ellis // Guitars
Matt Kilner // Drums
Vitriol online:
With brand-new extreme metal popping off in every direction, it has been a wild start to 2024 for brutal music lovers. Five long years since their neck-snapping debut LP, Portland, Oregon’s Vitriol are back with a sophomoric slab of skin-peeling death metal with Suffer & Become. Evolving from the ashes of brutal deathcore act Those Who Lie Beneath, Vitriol have worked tirelessly over the last decade at building a reputation for delivering technical death metal at it’s most visceral and impassioned.
Tech death can be a lifeless beast – the precision playing and technicality of the compositions can seem too machine-like and clean, lacking character and uniqueness. Vitriol do not have this issue. Lulling the listener in with a creeping, chiming guitar melody, Suffer & Become’s opener ‘Shame and It’s Aftermath’ erupts into six minutes of raging blastbeats and savage riffing. There’s no time for reprieve, with the low-tuned thud of first single ‘The Flowers of Sadism’ tightly following behind with a marching pace.
The dual vocals of founding members Kyle Rasmussen – guitars – and bassist Adam Roethlisberger make for an absolutely possessed attack – the duo howling, snarling and roaring out tales of pain, torment and anger. There are only so many superlatives to describe Rasmussen’s six-string work, but trust us when we say he might be one of the most exciting guitarists in the metal scene. You can hear how his ultra-hard playing and relentless attack drives the music along, shooting-off razor-sharp tremolo picking and swept-arpeggios all over the record.
To Vitriol’s credit, Suffer & Become does throw in some variation to keep things. The (relatively) dialled back pace of ‘The Isolating Lie of Learning Another’ might make it the heaviest, dirtiest track on the release, while the excellent instrumental piece ‘Survival’s Careening Inertia’ packs haunting clean guitars over blasting drumming. Speaking of the man behind the kit, debutant Matt Kilner – who also moonlights in the one-man project Nithing – is an absolute beast. His double kick speeds are up there with the fastest in the game, while the usage of two different snares – one big and beefy, the other tuned high and pinging – adds an under-utilised, unique edge to the drum work.
Suffer & Become is addictive in it’s pure violence – there’s no doubt that it’s filled with pedal-to-the-floor punishment – but Vitriol also flex their songwriting muscles throughout, with their music always building to a thunderous conclusion. The stomping Morbid Angel-esque ‘I Am Every Enemy’, ‘Nursing from the Mother Wound’ and the apocalyptic closer ‘He Will Fight Savagely’ – the last minute is seriously crushing – all take the listener to a logical, devastating end.
Let’s make no mistake about it, Vitriol’s sophomore effort will be far too much for a lot of music fans – but for those who enjoy the most brutal end of the heavy world, Suffer & Become will be very hard to top in 2024. It’s eye-popping frenzy is absorbing and certainly not background music – do not drive or operate heavy machinery to this album. A must listen for metalheads – and musicians – across the board, between the new Resin Tomb record and Vitiriol’s opus Suffer & Become, this year has kicked off amazingly for extreme metal fiends.
Vitriol – Suffer & Become tracklisting
- Shame and It’s Aftermath
- The Flowers of Sadism
- Nursing from the Mother Wound
- The Isolating Life of Learning Another
- Survival’s Careening Inertia
- Weaponized Loss
- Flood of Predation
- Locked in Thine Frothing Wisdom
- I Am Every Enemy
- He Will Fight Savagely
Rating: 9/10
Suffer & Become is out January 26th on Century Media Records. Order here
Review By – Andrew Kapper. Twitter: @andrew_kapper
