Suffocation is an American death metal band formed in 1989 in Centereach, New York, currently consisting of lead guitarist Terrance Hobbs, bassist Derek Boyer, rhythm guitarist Charlie Errigo, and vocalist Ricky Myers. The band rose to prominence with their 1991 debut album Effigy of the Forgotten, which became a blueprint for death metal in the 1990s. Since then, Suffocation has recorded eight albums. These feature growled vocals with downtuned guitars, fast and complex guitar riffs and drumming, open chord notes and occasional breakdowns.

In 2016, the staff of Loudwire named them the 23rd-best metal band of all time.

Suffocation was formed in 1989 in Long Island, New York, by vocalist Frank Mullen, guitarists Guy Marchais and Todd German, bassist Josh Barohn, and a drummer whose name has not been disclosed. The band is named after the Morbid Angel song of the same name, which was Mullen's idea. By 1990, the band had replaced their founding members with hired guitarists Terrance Hobbs and Doug Cerrito along with drummer Mike Smith, who were members of a local band called Mortuary, which had already disbanded. The quintet was mainly influenced by fellow American death metal bands as well as Britain's Napalm Death and Brazil's Sepultura. Suffocation would be unique among the death metal community for featuring African-American musicians in their lineup, with Smith commenting on meeting Hobbs for the first time: "That's where I first noticed, 'Wow, there's another black guy playing this kind of stuff.'" They signed a contract with Relapse Records in 1990, becoming one of the first three bands to sign onto the newly founded label alongside Incantation and Deceased.

The band's first EP, Human Waste, was released through Relapse Records in 1991. The first full-length debut album, Effigy of the Forgotten, was recorded by producer Scott Burns at Morrisound Studios in Tampa, Florida and released by Roadrunner Records in 1991. The album took a week to produce, and was recorded on a budget of $5,000. Hobbs said of the experience, "To know that Deicide, Death, Morbid Angel and all those bands were in that studio was a super amazing experience [...] Florida was a big thing; that was like our Mecca. For us to go down to Morrisound, recording with Scott Burns, an amazing engineer, was just unbelievable."

Though it initially received mixed reviews from critics, Effigy of the Forgotten would later gain acclaim and become greatly influential in extreme metal music, influencing the technical death metal and slam death metal genres. In 2004, the album was voted as the 342nd greatest metal album of all time in Martin Popoff's book of The Top 500 Heavy Metal Albums of All Time.

In July 1991, founding bassist Josh Barohn left to join Autopsy and was replaced by Chris Richards (ex Apparition/Sorrow).

The band toured the US in 1992 and 1993 to support the album. One of the earliest tours included Vader, Dismember and Defiance. On July 16, 1992, the band travelled to Detroit, Michigan and played what was described as a "spot show" with Brutal Truth, Pungent Stench, Incantation and Exhorder. Terrance Hobbs recalled: "I think we got a lot of momentum by [going] out there to play. That’s why you saw us playing together all the time. We’d get brought out there all the time. We played a lot of gigs back then, but it was spotty. It wasn’t until ’96 that we really started to tour, but we broke up two years later."

In 1993, the sophomore album Breeding the Spawn was released, its production and mixing being a key weak point that would be immediately harshly criticized. Originally, the band was due to return to Morrisound and record the album with Scott Burns, but Roadrunner was unwilling to fund the album properly and refused to pay for the studio time, forcing them to record elsewhere. After this album, drummer Mike Smith left the band, the situation with the recording process for this album being a major reason for him leaving the band, and was replaced by Doug Bohn. Tracks of Breeding the Spawn would be re-recorded in future Suffocation releases.