Suffocation's next album is an incredibly important one. It's their first since 2017's …of the Dark Light and their first-ever with vocalist Ricky Myers behind the mic instead of Frank Mullen. In an interview with Blabbermouth, guitarist Terrance Hobbs said the new record is as "aggressive, fast, brutal and melodic" as ever.
"The new material is just as aggressive, fast, brutal and melodic and as time went on, I learned more from people like [producer] Scott Burns. He helped us understand making a song sound like a song, not just a run-on sentence or something so bland that it loses the interest of the listener.
"I have to take those things to heart and the rest of my band did as well, like Doug, [former bassist] Chris [Richards] and [former drummer] Mike Smith. He really gave us a little bit more gumption to know about producing music. Even though he was the engineer, he still did produce some songs for us and it was eye-opening to understand that type of methodology."
Hobbs also touched on the fact that he's the only founding member of Suffocation left, but that he's not interested in writing the whole record to maintain some sort of connection to the past. Or as Hobbs puts it, it's "not just Terrance and the Suffocations."
"I have new guys in my band who bring new blood into it. It makes it pretty interesting and it still keeps it interesting for me. Now, I have different people that I can feed off of instead of being, 'Oh, man. I'm the last guy in the band who is writing. I'm just going to write the whole fucking thing.' I don't want that. I don't think the public wants that; they already have ten albums of us. I'm really excited about the new stuff. It's a little different. A lot of pressure has been taken off of me and has made it where this band will be, not just Terrance and the Suffocations or Frank and the Suffocations."
In a previous interview, drummer Eric Morotti said the new album is less "overproduced" than …Of The Dark Light. Bassist Derek Boyer added that the new stuff leans heavier into the band's more "beatdown" sound of yesteryear.
"Our last album Of The Dark Light had a different aspect," said Morotti. "It was a little more new school, new stuff, new editing… I don't know when the mixing went down, but everything sounds a little overproduced, and we weren't going for that when we recorded with [producer Joe Cincotta]. So the authenticity, whatever, of this [new album] is going to be a lot better because we might even just track it here in [guitarist Terrance Hobbs] studio."
"It is definitely Suffocation. It's not like we're gonna just add you know, classical guitars or violins or stupid shit that we're not famous for or influenced by," added Boyer. "We're always gonna stick to our guns. It's brutal, it's technical, it's fast, it's got real slow heavy beatdown stuff that you know, we've been kind of straying away from just because everybody's going so fucking fast and technical that we progress with the way the industry's progressing, but you can't forget that Suffocation has those heavy beatdown parts. So there's a lot of that shit too."
