In the name of Satan, by all means hail, throw the horns at or praise the goat but don’t torment it and certainly never, ever think about molesting one. After all we have all seen what happens in films such as Island Of Death and The Witch! Causing fainting among cloven-hooved creatures across the land, this particular dastardly duo of provocateurs hit us with a scabrous brand of blackened death from their Belgium barnyard, which sees them embraced by new label Season Of Mist. A couple of albums came before this one, the last via Amor Fati saw them preaching their ‘Sermons to Death’ back in 2015. There have been several line-up shuffles and now we have live and studio members of acts such as Belphegor, Arkhon Infaustus and Bethlehem making a good old fashioned racket, which certainly doesn’t include a cover of anything like ‘Away In A Manger.’
Immediately bashing skulls with a brutal drumming work out and frenzied cleaving, opener ‘Pantheon Of Devourment’ bombs straight in and gallops off. Vocals rasp and are suitably vile and evil in equal measures and one assumes that the whole 43-minutes of the album is going to be an unrelenting shelling of the senses. Indeed, a fair bit of it is but feet are taken off the pedal occasionally and take the listener off down an orthodox black, left-hand path. This opener for instance broods into a segment that slowly churns, complete with some ritualistic invocations that sound like they are straight out the doctrines of Thelema. The barbarity is never far away though and when they go for it as on the decimating ‘Disorder And Disruption,’ lovers of the aforementioned artists and Hate whose latest Rugia has also cleaved this listener’s skull recently should be in their element. Atmosphere is occasionally injected as in ‘Curse’ which has some glorious shard like guitar parts unravelling slowly through it after executing a particularly barbarous bombing raid. It makes it all the more sinister and proves that this is far from a one-dimensional assault. The shorter ‘Road To Oblivion’ also provides a respite as a midway point of smoggy ambience.
The bouncy and burgeoning ‘Deceitful Faith’ is religious attack that is going to get a crowd worked up and a doomy part complete with spoken word sample is well placed and effective. No salvation will be found here! By the time the pair have resurrected ‘Ravenous Ghouls’ and set the ‘Charnel Houses’ ablaze this will certainly have left a bloody mark and any goats in the vicinity will be hiding in the trees (still no idea how they do that). Thankfully it seems no animals were actually harmed in the making of this album so there’s no problem digging in and giving it a guilt-free listen; self-flagellation whilst doing so is optional.
(7.5/10 Pete Woods)
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