[Cover art by Ettore Aldo del Vigo]
Scenes like heavy metal tend to be rather incestuous. I don’t mean the kind that all the adult sites are such big fans of these days, but rather the fact that so few people seem to ever only be in one band. “But whatever happened to the purest form of love that is monogamy?” said the True Patriot cranking one out to his Punisher flag alone in his mom’s basement. Shut up, nerd; having multiple outlets means we hear from a greater variety of an artist’s muses!
What the hell was I talking about again? Oh, right, musicians in multiple bands. Suffer happens to share guitarist/vocalist C.R. Petit and bassist Jason Ellsworth with Angerot and Empty Throne, both of whom we’ve covered in these hallowed halls before. Ellsworth, however, is not an original member. Petit and lead guitarist Justin Aeschliman are. And silly me, I forgot there’s another Petit named Daron, who also plays lead guitar but is not an original member. That said, Aeschliman and D. Petit list Suffer as their only band on the ol’ Metal Archives. South Dakota is kind of small, so I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising. So small, in fact, that René Gerbrandij is only listed as a session drummer rather than a full member, and his only M-A credits are for this album and Suffer’s previous EP. By the way, both Angerot and Emptythrone formed in the last seven years, while Suffer began in 1989; Suffer, however, only has two full-lengths, while Angerot has three. Are we following all of this?
That meatiness comes through in a number of ways on Grand Canvas of the Aesthete. The triple-guitar attack provides an extra dab of heft that isn’t super common in this style of death metal. Similarly, the liberal use of more guttural vocals throughout, which Petit normally leverages as his dominant voice in other projects, adds to that sense of goriness fit for the gutter. The band also isn’t afraid to get big, simple and use space. Sure, they shred things along, but look to moments like the 1:45 mark of “Ashened Frolic; The Exquisite Promenade,” where the song opens up into a big-time riff that has a sliver of a groove. There’s a more straightforward rock and roll riff disguised in deathly murk in “The Fetching Cranley Gardens” as well. Don’t let that strike fear into your heart, though, because that song is inspired by Dennis Nilsen, who killed more than a dozen young men and boys and then held onto their bodies for prolonged periods of time before disposing of them in delightful ways such as flushing them down the toilet. The gross reigns supreme even at the band’s most infectious.
The lead guitar work on Grand Canvas of the Aesthete is also on point. The leads are varied across the album, balancing shredding against weeping melody or wailing notes while also being plentiful (the title track alone has three). All three guitarists shoot their shot in this department aren’t afraid to limit their time to shine to a handful of seconds or let it rip for over a minute. Whether it’s dive-bombing and squiggly, climbing and descending like a roller coaster, or peeling the flesh of fingertips across the fretboard, the guitar work services the goal of the album perfectly. That goes for the riffs, too, as they balance each other out. The melody never gets too powerful as to become pretty, and every soaring moment is battered back to earth with a hefty chug. “Inhalent Caustic Foray” exemplifies this well as a fiery shredding melody is crushed under the boot of a massive breakdown.
When everything comes together at its best, you get songs like “Human Primal Cuts.” The clear vocal delivery punctuates grooving melodies perfectly, the guitarists fire off more than one lead, and the song has an infectious chorus that is sure to have listeners snarling along. The only real downside of this album is the song lengths. Every track surpasses five minutes. Some of that could be an issue of self-editing (i.e., the wailing passage that feels like an outro in “Carnal Flesh Parade” but is followed by two more minutes of music). More importantly, there is a slight lack of variety in the types of songs on offer. Having a quick-slicing track or two like “Thrasher’s Abbatoir” on Surgical Steel would be a huge boon to making these longer tracks even more impactful.
Suffer carves with melodies as sharp as a scalpel and that’s not surprising from a band that worships cutting tools of the trade. Luckily, they go beyond that with an appreciation for meatier heft and an ear for memorable hooks. The band may not have a large back catalog, but they’ve been around for 35 years, and it shows in a very positive way.
