Review: “Rip Tide” by Suffer Yourself

“Through the darkness of futures past, The magician longs to see, One chants out between two worlds, Fire walk with me…”

Originally starting life in Rzeszów Poland in 2011 before moving to Kyiv Ukraine, Doom mongers Suffer Yourself now find themselves in Stockholm Sweden after a decade in Hell. They maybe a full band but “Rip Tide” was composed by guitarist and vocalist Stanislav Govorukha (ex-Coram Deo, ex-Illuminandi and ex-Auto da Fe) between 2018-2020 and he remains the mastermind of a project he began solo. Engineering, mixing and producing the album he recorded in Relaxet Winter Cabin and in NecroCrypt studio in February-June 2020 where he was accompanied by mainstays Lars Abrahamsson (guitars), Kateryna Osmuk (drums) along with new bassist Johan Selleskog who joined the band in 2019. On the technical side, only the mastering by Greg Chandler (Shattered Hope, Convocation, Esoteric) was done outside of his control…

A 20 minute Magnum Opus of dark epic grandeur, “Spit in the Chasm” is a dirge laden bleak monster that bleeds with the slow burn of an undertone of claustrophobic suffocation, as if the air slowly being sucked out of the room into the vacuum of space to the abject horror of those witnessing it. The slow crushing inevitability of it is intertwined with moments of pure Death Metal with tempo shifts away from the foreboding sinister menace like the plot twist of a Steven King novel. The Doom Metal equivalent of a Macabre orchestral piece, Govorukha’s unclean vocals are that of a demonic possession, summoning victims on which to feed like a vampire. Dissonant guitar work with some 90’s Death Metal moments gives everything an epic dark beauty as the cut builds from a calm through to a mighty storm. The equally epic “Desir de Trepas Maritime (Au Bord de la Mer Je Veux Mourir)” sees the quartet joined by Cellist Jiro Yoshioka, who provides a cinematic introduction before icy piano moments creep in behind a spoken word sample as the melancholic mournful Doom Metal riffs play out. Eerie and haunting with creaking floorboards there is sense of captivating drama throughout, like a psychological horror film that sees you gripping your pillow, unable to watch on but unable to look away. Pavel Malyshkin, better known as Ugasanie provides a drone score for final horror “Submerging“, a soundscape piece that depicts drowning with mental images that turn things full circle to the cover art, a fragment from “The Mew Stone at the Entrance of Plymouth Sound, Devonshire” by J.M.W. Turner (1816). “Rip Tide” is so much more than a Doom Metal album; it’s a cinematic film score to a tragedy of epic proportions [8/10]

1. Spit in the Chasm
2. Desir de Trepas Maritime (Au Bord de la Mer Je Veux Mourir) (ft. Jiro Yoshioka)
3. Submerging (ft. Ugasanie)

“Rip Tide” by Suffer Yourself is out 25th June via Aesthetic Death and is available over at bandcamp