What with their (as of this writing) upcoming album Blood For the Master, I revisited Goatwhore's previous LP, Carving Out the Eyes of God, playing it on tank-like, if outdated, speakers at jet-engine volume.
At its best, in other words.
"Apocalyptic Havoc" the lead single (see below) opens with all out Venom/Celtic Frost 32nd notes updated for this year (which actually is a pretty good synopsis of the entire album), and contains the immortal line "Who needs a God, when you've got Satan?!"
"The All-Destroying," next, is blastbeats then D-beats then flat-out downbeats, and contines the Goatwhore tradition thusfar, of grimly-satisfied-nodding-to-riffs, rather than out-and-out funky jams... and I love every time singer Ben Falgoust says "Ooooh!" à la Tom G. Warrior.
"Carving out the eyes of God," has a cool, melodic blastbeaten chorus (and is pretty hummable), and on the right sterio/headphones, the triplet bass drum patterns are Alex Van Halen on "Hot For Teacher" cool.
"Shadow of a Living Knife," in its middle section fires up a great triplet-bass-drum blast beat and segues into a sweet semi-sweep-picked solo... "Provoking the Ritual of Death" opens with tribal drums and sludge riffs before its blastbeaten percussion returns... "In Legions, I am Wars of Wrath," with its refrain of LIES! is fucking Epic... "Reckoning of the Soul Made Godless" slows down and rocks out in 4/4, "Razor Flesh Devoured" is pure fury, blastbeat to D-beat to-blastbeat, ad infinitum, wherein it fades out (officfially ending the album), although...
"To Mourn and Wander Forever Through Forgotten Doorways," a bonus track, comes up next, ominous minor-chorded arpeggios leading to a spoken-word invocation-- easily the moodiest track here, not unlike "Lucifer" from Behemoth's Evangelion. I can see why it wasn't on the official LP, but it probably should've been, maybe right in the middle as a tempo-velocity respite....
The entire album is perfect "blackened death metal," i.e., the guitars are detuned (i.e., bass-y as hell) and there are as many hyper-kinetic D-beats as there are blast beats, but the lyrics and imagery is occult/Satanic.
Overall, generic but completely invested in what they do.
--Horn
Goatwhore, Carving out the eyes of God
