Artist: Goatwhore
Title: Blood for the Master
Type: Album
Label: Metal Blade Records
You always know where you stand with Goatwhore. Hoodies, skulls, blood and an avowed liking for Celtic Frost and Venom call come into it. Heavy-sounding track titles means serious Heavy Metal but not heavy going, based on what I’ve heard previously and now of the latest work “Blood for the Master”.
Subtlety isn’t a word I would particularly associate with these veteran musicians from New Orleans, but if you’re looking for it; I’d suggest there’s more on the previous album “Carving Out the Eyes of God”. In fact “Blood for the Master” is more inventive than it appears on the surface. “Collapse in Eternal Worth” sets out like a smooth and brutal version of a Motorhead epic. It will come as no surprise to anyone that it’s thrashy and furious. The combination of the speed, the instrumental persistence and contemptuous vocals, it becomes a Blackened Thrash Metal. But let’s not get intellectual about this. “Collapse in Eternal Worth” and its successors are for windmilling and headbanging.
As “When Steel and Bone Meet“ thrashes on, with the drums operating at record speed and snarling vocals mixing with integrated guitar solos for extra evil, I realised it’s easy to get lost in the excitement. In fact it’s at the same pace and the same delivery but who’s bothered? After more straight line Metal anger on “Parasitic Scriptures of the Sacred Word”, the album has a momentary measured moment through “In Deathless Tradition”. The riff is chunky and this is more subtle but the emphasis is still on brutal power. It is only right then that we return to the thunderously dark, machine-gun fire of “Judgement of the Bleeding Crown”. There is a mood and an old school metal feeling but this is more of a battering ram than a track. Exotic guitar work precedes the drum-led onslaught of “Embodiment of This Bitter Chaos”. It’s driving, exciting and passionate – like Motorhead again. The riff is absorbing, the solos are great and the Black vocals are penetrating – super track. A strength of this album is that as a track ends, a new development can be expected with the next, albeit within the same thrashing framework. “Beyond the Spell of Discontent” is more back-to-basics but it is enhanced in quality by the guitar work. I didn’t like “Death to the Architects of Heaven” so much. It is relentless and energetic but not especially interesting.
“An End to Nothing” captures the ethos of this band more than any other track. For me, it conjured up the image of a room full of fired-up people in a frantic circle, moshing and crowd-surfing and responding however they want to this high-adrenaline approach. “When we write, we think of a live approach”, one of the band has gone on record to say. Yes, and the sound is excellent too. The energy is most certainly that of a live performance. To finish the album “My Name is Frightful Among the Believers” has a Black Metal ring to it but as ever, it is highly charged. That’s the trademark of Goatwhore.
I can see why Goatwhore have acquired cult status over their 15 years of existence. They know what they want to do. There are no pretensions. Trying to analyse the variations is a bit pointless really for, as the vocalist has stated, it’s just “Straight Heavy Metal”. It’s honest and you can take it or leave it. It’s fine with me.
(7.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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