Suffering Hour - Impelling Rebirth (2025)^{Release ID: 63105}

I first took notice of Suffering Hour with their 2021 album, "The Cyclic Reckoning", which I found interesting for its incorporation of influences from Eighties' gothic rock into its blackened death maelstrom. This EP is a different beast however, the gothic element to the guitar sound has been completely stripped away and replaced with dissonant guitar leads and the tempos have been ramped up, resulting in a more immediately visceral and in-your-face experience. The production here is somewhat thicker and muddier than previously and when coupled with such frantic and hectic material it kind of feels to me like Gorguts playing War Metal. I have only recently really been converted to the charms of disso-death (mainly thanks to Ulcerate) and the version of that employed here by Suffering Hour works really well with the rampant black metal blasting. The opening title track is probably the most accessible track on the EP and does still exhibit a little bit of the gothic feel of earlier material, but after that it is pretty much a relentless maelstrom with the sub-two minute "Anamnesis" that follows "Impelling Rebirth" leading the charge. At less than fifteen minutes total runtime, none of the five tracks on offer here are likely to become boring, but that is even less likely when you hear how much is going on within such short compositions.

At my advancing age, I generally prefer to stick to stuff I suspect I will enjoy, but I am glad I have persisted with delving into more dissonant styles because sometimes a record like this comes along and revitalises my jaded perceptions with a good old-fashioned (metaphorical) slap in the face.

Something about Impelling Rebirth just doesn’t stick with me. I have listened to it on various days, in different moods, with varying levels of focus and even if I sit and do nothing other than listen to the blackened death metal tropes of Suffering Hour, minimising all other distractions, it just sort of passes me by. I can see that they do carry an “avant-garde” tag depending on where you look on the internet, which I wouldn’t necessarily agree with; it is a frenzied experience to listen to Impelling Rebirth, but that doesn’t make it “avant-garde”. The furious, dashing nature of the compositions are certainly a challenge to keep up with mind, and very few stick around to get close to the four-minute mark. Given this is an EP, that is expected I suppose.

When the band settles down into a rhythm, it works extraordinarily well. These moments on ‘Revelation of Mortality’ and ‘Inexorable Downfall’ are the standout moments in an otherwise frenetically infused affair. This combination of Bölzer, DSO and Gorguts is fine in a more isolated instance but here there is too short a space for them all to work together with any sense of unity. I do think that some bands have a style that does not suit shortened formats. This has not put me off Suffering Hour and I do intend to revisit them on a full-length offering in the future, but I just can’t get my head around this EP.