OneMetal.com REVIEW:
Goatwhore – Carving Out The Eyes Of God

With a name like Goatwhore, you expect this New Orleans quartet to pull some seriously aggressive material out of the bag – and on Carving Out The Eyes Of God, their fourth album, they certainly don’t disappoint. Goatwhore‘s sound takes in elements of black metal, death metal and thrash metal to create a uniquely seething stew of skin-flaying riffage, hyper-speed drumming and roaring vocals.

Soilent Green vocalist Ben Falgoust provides throat-scraping duties, and his shifts between strangled rasps and guttural death metal roars suit the blasphemous, spiteful nature of the lyrics perfectly. Nathan Bergeron lays down tight, throbbing basslines, but the real praise on this album has to go to drummer Zack Simmons and guitarist Sammy Duet – the former’s ability to shift tempos and styles from dizzying blasts to tribalistic tom-thumping via forceful thrash beats on the turn of a dime is nothing short of spectacular, while Duet’s riff-craft touches all bases from sinister, tremolo-picked blackness to shredding solos, with chunky, Defleshed-esque death/thrash riffage thrown in for good measure.

Erik Rutan’s production is absolutely top-notch too – razor-sharp guitar tones couple with rumbling bass and a remarkably clear and punishing drum sound, while Falgoust’s vocals sound huge without dominating the mix.

The one criticism I have is that, despite the frequent tempo changes from song to song, Goatwhore never really take their foot all the way off the gas, making this an unrelenting, yet exhausting album to listen to. There’s a kind of mid-album slump where the tracks begin to start blending together if you’re listening less than fully attentively – although there is usually at least one or two moments (like the crawling, hammering opening to fifth track ‘Provoking The Ritual Of Death’ which gives way to some classic death metal tremolo-picked riffage) to snap the listener out of their reveries and get the head banging again.

That said, however, this is still an impressive release, aggressive and arresting, with an excellent production and some great songs. Definitely more than worth the time of any self-respecting metalhead.

Bottom Line

Carving Out The Eyes Of God is a frenetic, hate-fuelled exercise in metallic savagery that can get exhausting in its unrelenting aggression, but nevertheless remains an energising and entertaining extreme metal record.