Hearing the latest effort by the Louisianan masters of blackened
swampcore, Goatwhore, made this February 15th possibly the most
eventful Valentine’s Day in my (thus far) grimdark, loveless mortal existence,
and while I wasn’t immediately floored by the slightly thrashier approach our
favorite bayou crawlers chose on their latest opus, repeated listens ultimately
cumulated in an album that I can see myself returning to in aeons to come.
The
most obvious contrast that can be made here is to Goatwhore’s previous album,
Carving Out the Eyes of God. While the
wicked hooks and punkish attitude of the latter album had propelled Goatwhore
at last onto the radar of the metallic mainstream, I felt that the sullen,
bitter miasma that characterizes the work of so many Louisiana metal bands (and
had characterized all of Goatwhore’s albums up until that point) was slightly
compromised in favor of a catchier, more accessible approach, something that
diminished its power relative to earlier efforts like A Haunting Curse.
To go
over why Blood for the Master truly excels in contrast however, I must emphasize how it
brings back much of the claustrophobic aggression that had characterized
Funeral Dirge for A Rotting Sun and A Haunting Curse and integrates it with the
superb songwriting of Carving, creating a work that is simultaneously catchy
and abrasive in the ears of the listener.
The thrash influence is stronger than ever, with songs like “Collapse in
Eternal Worth” and “Death to the Architects of Heaven” filled with palm-muted
thrashing madness that grows repetitive, but works well in churning the
collective momentum of the record in a forward direction.
The
second-wave black metal influences have also returned in full-force, stronger
than they have been since the days of Funeral Dirge. While the last two records took much of the
power chord-laden style of Celtic Frost and interpreted it in a modern context,
Blood for the Master sees these swamp dwellers once again making a sojourn to
Nordic shores, with tracks such as “Beyond the Spell of Discontent” chalk full
of tremolo-picked melodic melancholy that hearkens back to Darkthrone and
Gorgoroth’s earlier days. Yet amidst the
cacophony of classic, yet clichéd influences, Goatwhore never loses their
uniquely American identity, throwing in moments of sludgy southern attitude,
most prominently evident in “When Steel and Bone Meet,” one of my personal
favorites off the record.
Despite
its unique atmosphere and tasteful integration of antediluvian influences
within a modern framework, Blood for the Master was not without its
weaknesses. First of all, Louis Benjamin
Falgoust II (a mouthful more befitting of a monarch of the Anciens Regime than
a black metal vitriol spewer)’s vocals have certainly declined since the days
of Soilent Green’s Pussysoul, and here he sounds more like a tired old man
attempting to maintain a (annoyingly “hardc0re”) façade of true aggression than
the mutilated larynx of nihilistically-fueled anger a black metal vocalist is
supposed to be. I found that this
uninspired approach often interfered with the motifs and soundscapes the band
was attempting to conjure, often breaking me out of whatever necrotic stupor a
great riff puts me in back into the shitstain of reality. Great vocalists like Erik Danielsson of
Watain, Mortuus/Arioch of Funeral Mist, and Naas Alcameth of Nightbringer only
serve to intensify the crushing wall of oppression that is black metal, but Ben
Falghoust’s voice is utterly devoid of phlegm, black bile, and hate, and in
their current state sound more appropriate for a dickless metalcore act than
a great band like Goatwhore.
The songwriting,
while still memorable, doesn’t have quite the same staying power as some records
in their back catalog. The songs, all
structured in a similar manner and somewhat lacking in dynamics, have a tendency to mesh
together as in many inferior black metal records, and there are no massive
standouts like Carving’s title track or “Forever Consumed Oblivion” on Blood
for the Master. I mentioned before that
the palm-muted thrash picking grows extremely irritating if the album is
listened to as a whole, and indeed, hearing them used in an identical fashion
over and over again gives the album an artificial, inauthentic feeling that
sadly shatters the black metal spell.
Despite these complaints, my desire for a more brutal incarnation of
Goatwhore was satisfied quite nicely by Blood for the Master, and I’d recommend
this album to any acolyte of heavy metal for its accessible yet potent approach
to the genre, as well as to more seasoned black metal hierophants looking for
some originality in their collection.
Rating: 8/10
Rating: 8/10
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