Suffocation - Effigy of the Forgotten (1991)

   After the style what is called now as "old school death metal" seemed to reach it's borders, still something more intense had to come. The appearence of Suffocation meant the beginning of something new.
   After the musical minimalism temporarily couldn't show anything new, things turned into the opposite way, it was time to play more complex music. Suffocation opened to that way with their appearence. "Effigy of the Forgotten" was more raw than it's coetaneous albums in the genre, but not because of it's experimenting ambitions. Their technical brutal death music lay down the basics of modern sounding death metal. Not only to play fast was the new trend, but to pile complex themes, accord them together, to find the balance and to not create a complete chaos. It required higher skills of course than playing fast only, but it's too easy to get lost in the maze of technical chaos that way and lose the feeling. Suffocation had no problems to make it, and became one of the most well known of death metal bands with their raw brutality.