It’s not the first time I have woken up after a night at a gig in London to find a Necrosadistic Goat Torture CD in my pocket and it probably won’t be the last. However this time it’s the bleaters debut album following on from various demos and minis and a massive assault of gigs that have been hard to miss if you ever frequent the less salubrious metal nights in London town. They have been through the highs and lows and plenty of bottles of beer in their career and one thing that has to be said is that they have always gone for it with a gritty determination and have refused to let the wolf in the door and stop them in their rugged attempts to make a noisy racket on both stage and disc. One highlight that got them quite a bit of notice was their ex goatess singer, who jumped ship back to Germany and joined Nocturnal. This probably just meant with nobody to mother them the rest of the band simply went back into things in a more drunken and uncouth manner. Somewhere along the line they managed to get signed by French label Drakkar and record enough songs for their debut; this is the result.

It might only be a short half an hour or so but Armageddon was never meant to last long, it’s what’s left in its wake that is the important thing and the devastation behind this album is pretty destructive and flattening. Chunky thrashing guitars plough into a beefy drum blasting tumult as ‘The Day All God’s Die’ kicks in. The vocals are growled out and there is little chance of understanding what they are on about other than the fact it’s bound to be ugly and the odd guitar solo spirals out the speakers along with it all. There is a sense of melody, even if it is brutal as fuck and although the musicianship is hardly tight as a gnats chuff or going to win any awards for technical prowess it’s the steadfast grit behind it that carries it all off. Militaristic drumming and a catchy solo take us onto ‘Raven’s Call’ and the deathly assault picks up a gear and rattles off once again. One thing that should be mentioned is that the production is nice and punchy and they really have got the most out of it, no weak crappy demo quality sound here.
Having said this there are some nice reverberating vocal howls flying out on songs like ‘Inner Daemon’ (perhaps this lot are wolves in goats clothing) and they help enforce the volatile nature of the musicianship nicely.

The title track is especially sharp and snappy with some slower grooves powering through it and a moody solo. The apocalyptic nature of it all matches the sleeve art nicely and it is a song that I bet is going to go down well live if the band ever manage to get a decent PA with no sound issues to play it through. ‘Will To Power’ also sticks out, perhaps that is partly due to the fact there is a much rawer original rehearsal version included on the end of the song too but probably as it’s a well thought out number and rages to the hilt. With a screech of “Sacrifice” ringing out on last number ‘Nemesis’ there is an air of familiarity about this, perhaps I have caught it live. Maybe it’s just that giving this a lot of listens over the last week it has really sunk in.

So, a solid all round debut album from this hard working, hard drinking, multi-national London based rabble. Goat’s done good!

(6.5/10 Pete Woods)

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