SUFFOCATION — Live in North America (review)

SUFFOCATION — Live in North America album cover

Live album · 2021 · Brutal Death Metal

4/5 · 2021-12-14
UMUR

"Live in North America" is a live album release by US death metal act Suffocation. The album was released through Nuclear Blast in November 2021 and features the full Suffocation live show recorded during the Death Chopping North American 2018 Tour at Middle East Down in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 22, 2018. It´s the band´s last performance with original lead vocalist Frank Mullen, who retired from recording and touring with Suffocation after the show.

The tracklist is exactly what you´d expect from a Suffocation show, featuring classics like "Thrones of Blood", "Pierced from Within", "Liege of Inveracity", "Catatonia", and of course "Infecting the Crypts". So it´s pretty much a legacy show, and you won´t find many tracks from the band´s post-2000 albums here. "Dismal Dream", "Surgery of Impalement", "Souls to Deny", and "As Grace Descends" are the exceptions here, but even a couple of those tracks have become mandatory on the band´s setlist in the last 20 years and should by now be considered classics in the band´s discography.

"Live in North America" opens with Mullen telling the audience that it´s his last show with Suffocation and how much he loves them followed by this: "Let´s fuckin´ do this thing...this is all about killing people, cause that´s what I like to do...this one is "Thrones of Blood"... Mullen was always a blue collar no bullshit type of vocalist and an icon in the death metal genre, and what better way to open his last show with Suffocation than this.

"Live in North America" is the second live album released by Suffocation, as they released "The Close of a Chapter" in 2006. It´s two very different sounding releases though. The tracklists are pretty similar but while "The Close of a Chapter" (2006) features a raw, unpolished, warts and all type of production, "Live in North America" is a professional, clear sounding, and overall accessible sounding live death metal album. I´ll go as far as to say that it would actually make a very good starting point for the uninitiated, as you not only get the "hits", but also a flawless and technically skilled performance from all involved, and to top it off a sound production which brings out the best in the material. Some may find the sound production a bit too sterile and not savage and brutal enough, but to my ears this is a perfect sounding production for Suffocation´s music and I´ve experienced a lot of nuances and details the original studio productions don´t reveal. If I have to make one complaint about the album it would be that there are fadeouts between some of the tracks, which takes away from the live experince. I´m not sure why they opted for that, but it is a minor issue as it disrupts the flow of the show.

Minor issue aside, "Live in North America" is still the perfect release to honor Mullen´s career and his vast contributions to the death metal genre. It´s a live release well worth your time and money and although it probably is a definitive goodbye to Mullen, one can always hope for a few guest appearences here and there. A 4 star (80%) rating is fully deserved.