I must have warmed to this release a lot faster than you did. It took me a few listens to really get into it so I can kinda understand where you’re coming from. Still I think this a great album and I can’t wait for my order to get here.

Is not that I was expecting a new “Effigy…” or a new “Pierced…” but to be honest I’ve read so many reviews about dudes being disappointed by this new record that I am now expecting this to be quite boring or something…

I haven’t heard it yet, I honestly don’t want to, but uhm… I pre-ordered this album like a month ago, and now after reading all this crap I keep thinking I should have bought something more brutal…like chopsticks or something…

Maybe it works on my behalf, maybe as my expectations are low as fuck due to all this harsh reviews I’ll now get the CD and I’ll think “hey…it’s not half bad dudes…fuck this is awesome” …

This album is not sitting with me well. I don’t like it at all so far, however I’m gonna keep spinning it and hopefully something will click with me

I actually like the fact that this album is initially a little less catchy or memorable than their recent work. The self titled immediately impressed me, but after I got to know the album better it seemed to have less depth. This one took me a few more listens, but right now I get the sense that it will have more lasting appeal. Of course I can’t say for sure how I will feel in a year.

Major respect for Suffocation, but this is a good album. Not a great album. Good. I’ve listened to it some 50x or so and I like it enough to repeat it. However, everytime I listen to this album there are points where I think the songwriting and riffs are very watered down and boring. IMO Suffocation have not really continued down the path they pioneered with Pierced. Perhaps they have lost the songwriting fire they had at one time as they’ve gotten older (it seems to be a very common phenomena in rock/metal bands). Perhaps it’s the small changes in lineup/chemistry over the years. Blood Oath also has semi-weak production that sounds like someone threw a blanket over the speakers. Images of Purgatory, Come Hell or High Priest, Blood Oath are standouts for me. Until they put out a brutal album like Pierced again I think the avg Suffo fan will be mildly disappointed.

I have to agree, Dismal Dream is annoying as SHIT… just like Translucent Patterns of Delirium on the previous full length, it was thrown on there to please the Slipknot and Lamb of God kiddies. Something simple and traditionally structured with extremely “nu” lyrics (SHUT UP, YOU). They weren’t kidding when they said they wanted to start getting more success; too bad Mike Smith never mentioned they’d be writing gay fucking songs on purpose to try and get more attention/success. I actually think the S/T is stronger as a whole, simply because the first half of the CD (minus the aforementioned track) plus Entrails of You (killed live) and the re-recordings of Prelude to Repulsion AND, more importantly, Anomalistic Offerings (!!!)… Marital Decimation is nice, but listening to that re-recording just makes you realize how inferior the rest of the album is in comparison. The S/T I feel did a better job with the “catchier” sound of Suffocation that they were going for, with better hooks and memorable parts… nothing is really memorable on Blood Oath. The title track is neat, though.

I have to admit that this album has still not grown on me. My problem with it, is that a lot of the songs sound interchangeable. You’ll be listening to a song, and you’ll think to yourself how it sounds familiar to another song you’ve heard on the album. There are times where they shine, but they don’t outweigh the ‘ho-hum’ experience I got.

I’m finding Blood Oath a minor let-down. I’ve long quit dreaming of another Suffo album of the absolute awesomeness of the my favourite trio: Effigy-Pierced-Breeding. Even the Despise the Sun EP was 17 minutes of death metal immortality. Alas, I was somehow still expecting a strong rebound from Suffocation after the rather ordinary last s-t disc.
The songs on Blood Oath, as so many of you guys have already pointed out, are pretty darn good without being outright great. That’s enough to seriously let me down. Sure, this isn’t a sucky album, no way. But there’s a certain tedious, tired, safety-seeking sameness to it, and lack of surprise and menace that I always revered about Suffo’s peerless death metal. The band seems to settle into a mid-paced, restrained, stripped-down groove, from the start, and pretty much stick with that, throughout the album. I didn’t mind the ‘production’ much. I thought it was precise, powerful and pretty satisfying, overall. I ain’t no audiophile but I can at least say that the sound production on BO is certainly a whole lot better than what I got on previous Suffo albums. I’ll foreve lament how an under-rated masterclass like Breeding the Spawn was awfully served by the production, at the time.
Sure, Mike’s drumming is nothing short of stunning, at several moments. But there’s a dispiriting dearth of blasting, I can’t fathom why. Frank (one my all-time dm-vocal heroes) disappoints me a lot by sort of overdoing the ‘decipherable’ vocal approach, and rather samey sounding style, on all the songs. I wish he sounded more varyingly brutal and far less decipherable. The solos aren’t awful or anything, but just pretty ordinary and similar. There’s a lot of seriously cool guitar playing by Hobbs and Marchais, though I wonder if I’m a snob in constantly yearning for the return of my absolute favourite Suffo guitar hero i.e Doug Cerrito, tag-teaming with the permanently marvellous Terrance Hobbs.

Dismal Dream, for one, still pisses me off. It isn’t exactly a totally shitty song, but it annoys me in that it typifies some of Suffo’s recent attempts at being blatantly much more “accessible” to a certain fan crowd that couldn’t ever stomach their earlier stuff (i.e if they ever even dared to venture there).
Some of the lyrics, the song structures of verse/chorus that so marred the s-t disc are all here on this disc, as well. Blood Oath somewhat reminds me of the last Deeds of Flesh disc, ‘Of What’s to Come’ in that both sound rather too melodic (in the ways these brutal-tech dm legends can get)and far too restrained, formulaic and gunning for wider acceptability than any of us ever expects them to be.
I have dissed the s-t disc, in the past. But now I’m starting to wonder if Blood Oath is actually a small step further back for this almighty band. Heck no, maybe I’ll give it further, patient hearings. After 3-4 full listens, I definite ‘like’ it. Except that, when it comes to my idols, Suffocation, no less, I just expect to get an out and out classic that I can ‘love’. With Blood Oath, I’m not betting that I will.