VITRIOL – SUFFER & BECOME

(DGR sets out to discover what Vitriol have become on their second album, out next week)

It’s been four years and change since the release of Vitriol‘s stunning full length To Bathe From The Throat Of Cowardice and, save for an EP of re-done/re-approached earlier material from an embryonic form of the band released during the plague years, we haven’t really heard much from them since.

And while there have been other groups in the meantime that have attempted (and sometimes succeeded) to play at the same relentless firestorm level, what makes Vitriol in particular work is the perceived integrity and passion in their music.

You get a sense listening to them that they mean every word that they say and will only stop when whichever vocalist is on the mic runs out of a) space for words or b) breath to utter said words.

But constantly maintaining that level of intensity will, inevitably, burn anybody out… which brings us firmly back around to Vitriol‘s second full length release, because it’s not humanly feasible for a group to exist at that level of intensity all over again… is it?

The answer is both simple and weirdly convoluted because, as their latest release demonstrates, yes they can in fact spin that machine up and lose their weight in water every night live on broiling intensity alone.

Whereas …The Throat of Cowardice was a very outward explosion that grabbed you by the balls every chance it could, Suffer & Become is a different beast, because that sense of bubbling fury seems a little more restrained this time around, allowing the band to delve far deeper into their guitar work than you might have expected.

As a result, there’s some surprising moments on Suffer & Become – sure, the old-testament-in-rage-and-fury-esque song titles are still present and accounted for, but would you believe Vitriol can write a hell of a mean melodic guitar solo or lacerating lead at times? Or that they can make a very, very light backing symphonic element sound as sinister as the band themselves?

This is stated in part because after the first four songs on Suffer & Become there was a moment where I realised that ‘you know, this has a surprising amount of melodic work in between the constant conflagration…‘ , especially when compared to …The Throat of Cowardice – and by extension the preceding Pain Will Define Their Death EP – which was definitely not an album of melodic hooks or even moments of slight beauty.

Sure, there were segments of songs that definitely clawed their way into your brain – the vocal delivery on “Legacy Of Contempt” or certain lines in “Victim” have a habit of setting up camp in the forefront of my skull more than you’d think – but those were releases intentionally designed to overwhelm you. In contrast, while Suffer & Become still trades in that same musical block it’s interesting seeing the Vitriol crew flex their more melodic muscles and subvert their own formula a bit.

I use the term flex because Vitriol come off very flexible with their songwriting this time around. There are massive and weighty guitar riffs being thrown about all over, many of which are carved into a groove so deep that they bend to near fracture – seeing how people react to a mean opening segment like the one in “The Isolating Lie…” before the song wanders into less-familiar territory is going to be a lot of fun – but the first four songs on Suffer & Become are like a cavalcade of different approaches and each song has a starkly different idea of what the band are than the one before it.

The core of that sound is still tightly wound around the merciless bulldozer of the band themselves wherein each vocal line feels like a damning proclamation, yet a song like “Shame And Its Afterbirth” having damned near a minute-plus of dizzying guitar solo (which is going to be absolute torture live, I’m sure) in its final third is outright surprising, whereas immediate follower “The Flowers Of Sadism” keeps a very quiet orchestral line buried in the background, making the events of that song and “Nursing From The Mother Wound” seem increasingly ominous (and, in the latter case, perhaps even fleetingly beautiful).

Some of the interest in the band’s new album may just come from seeing how Vitriol expand upon that initial infernal bellows-blast that was the first album, and there’s no question that Suffer & Become benefits from a clearer production than its predecessor – things are as relentlessly heavy as ever but the drum work has a little more boom and resonance and the multi-pronged vocal attack has the band still tearing their throats out at every opportunity.

You’ll also notice – maybe not immediately, but definitely in the apocalyptic, near-instrumental scene-setting of “Survival’s Careening Inertia” as it leads into “Weaponized Loss” – that the lower-end of the band is emphasized a little more as a whole, and while Suffer & Become may be a little less immediate than its predecessor (and the word “less” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, as we’re still dealing with a band whose overwhelming sound is like standing at the bottom of a collapsing cliff-face while not wearing a helmet) the album’s expanded take on the established Vitriol sound allows the band to be more than just “ceaseless” and “relentless” at every turn.

The guitar lead and solo work getting a boost in particular is going to stand out for people – even if Vitriol generally treat it as just one more weapon to both inflict and receive punishment with – and even during the one track where the vocals don’t go full blast-furnace you’ll still be checking to see if the drummer hasn’t passed out behind the kit by the time the song fades out (and that’s if they don’t just treat it as a lead-in for the song after it a la the way Anaal Nathrakh approach “Drug Fucking Abomination” in its live form).

There’s no treating an album like this as if it were ‘better‘ than its predecessor. It’s a dumb exercise. Is it as strong as its predecessor? Absolutely. Vitriol are in fine form on Suffer & Become even when they’re not in full ‘reduced-to-cinder’ mode.

That being said, it’s a ‘bigger‘ album for sure (especially in the sense of the band slowly expanding the base of their sound), and everything up front is still as huge and violent as you might expect (even in the rare moments of reprieve or melody that might slowly creep in), and it quickly becomes clear that Vitriol will grab any arrow they can so long as it can be shot.

Suffer & Become is a worthy follow up and is still going to twist someone’s head off if they’re not prepared. And if you are? Well then, you’ve got a hell of a journey to look forward to.