Every so often there comes along a piece of music that is so much more than a just a song. Because of its length and brilliant composition, as well as the other components of its complex structure, it becomes a work of art, a masterpiece. In my experience, this has only happened a handful of times, with songs such as: Nofx’s “the Decline,” Craw’s “Caught My Tell,” and Maiden’s “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.” Such songs are somewhat like the “A la recherche du temps perdu” (Marcel Proust’s literary masterpiece) of music. It would seem that every generation has its own “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” just as Iron Butterfly did in the late 60’s. And now, the Philadelphia avant garde punk and neo-progressive ghost-core band Northern Liberties has given the Suicide Generation its very own “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” The song is titled “Suffocation,” and it consumes a small piece of eternity with its many-layered and intricate parts, which begins with a well-constructed noise base of feedback and distant vocals and continues along a course of varying intensity and heaviness and range. For some odd reason, “Suffocation” reminds me of old Christian Death, the Theatre of Pain days, along with Craw, somewhere between Lost Nation Road and Strontium. It’s obviously a very personal song, with an undercurrent of fierce emotion, in addition to a deep intellectual well from which springs a mighty fountain of thought. All told, “Suffocation” is twenty-nine minutes in length, and it’s worth every second of time that it borrows from the universe.

“Suffocation” is a song that’s not afraid to run with scissors. Nor does it throw salt over its shoulder or knock on wood. It laughs off the seven years bad luck of broken mirrors. And if a black cat should cross its path, it will kneel down and run its cold hand over the animal’s sleek midnight-colored coat, pick it up, and take it home. In other words, it is a rather daring composition. And, to be sure, it leaves enormous footprints in the ground of its path, making it quite easy to track through the wilderness of the City Earth. And I will no doubt follow it to one or both of the only two shows at which Northern Liberties will be performing it live. One in Philadelphia. And another in Bethlehem. Currently we stand on that invisible line which separates the seasons, spring from winter. It’s time to bid farewell to the biting cold and the frost covered ground, to the seemingly perpetual gray skies and the stoical faces of passersby on the street, and the lingering piles of dirty snow melting into the gutters around the city. The sun heralds the approach of spring, and with it the funeral procession begins with head-swelling feedback and noise art, with duel percussion, with keys and thick strings and voice. So, we follow it. And in doing so we realize that we are about witness a “winter song” laid to rest. Simultaneously we lament the loss of one season and celebrate the arrival of another. I am among them. “Suffocation” by Northern Liberties is the music of the occasion. We will hear it live only twice, the first time in Philadelphia, the second in Bethlehem.

James Carlson
Philadelphia Indie Music Examiner