Review (and guest review by Matt Meehan) of Blood for the Master by Goatwhore

1. Collapse in Eternal Worth

2. When Steel and Bone Meet

3. Parasitic Scriptures of the Sacred Word

4. In Deathless Tradition

5. Judgement of the Bleeding Crown

6. Embodiment of This Bitter Chaos

7. Beyond the Spell of Discontent

8. Death to the Architects of Heaven

9. An End to Nothing

10. My Name Is Frighful Among the Believers

Blood for the Master is Goatwhore’s fifth full length album. This is the first album featuring new bassist, James Harvey since he joined in 2009 after Nathan Bergeron departed from the band. The other current members are Sammy Duet on guitar and vocals, Louis Falgoust on vocals, and Zack Simmons on drums. The album was recorded and mixed by the band’s long time friend and producer, Erik Rutan, who had worked with them on their last two albums, at Mana Recording Studios in St. Pertersburg, Florida. Duet said in an interview with Decibel Magazine: “It’s not like the new songs are a drastic change. It’s like an experimentation on how much more metal we can get – I mean actual metal; the roots of heavy metal. But not in a way that it sounds like power metal or anything like that. It’s like an extremely metal version of us.”

I don’t really know what to say about this album. I am not really a fan of Goatwhore, although they seem like a tight band. They do bring great music nonetheless, the vocals are very thrashy but sound like it belongs in a black metal band. The guitars are very catchy, but can switch from blackened death to thrash in an instant which is hard to follow. The guitar solos are very awesome and bring off a heavy metal feel. My favourite song is probably Collapse in Eternal Worth. All in all, I couldn’t get into this at all. I won’t rob Goatwhore of their talent but I just couldn’t do it. I think it may be because one minute you could classify them as thrash and the next you could say they’re blackened death. Its really hard to follow thus making it hard for me to get into it.

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Guest review by Matt Meehan

This being the first time listening to Goatwhore I expected a lot from a band with such an intense name but sadly they seemed to fall short for me. I found my self losing interest half way through the album, I found many of the tracks uninspiring. Although I found the tracks In Deathless Tradition and Embodiment of This Bitter Chaos to be quite satisfactory the rest of the album fell short in comparison. If you happen to be a big fan of Goatwhore you may want to pick this one up, but as far as Black/Death metal goes for me I’d rather listen to bands such as Behemoth or Belphegor.