GOATWHORE
A
Haunting Curse’
Ben
Falgoust - vocals
Sammy Duet - guitar
Nathan Bergeron - bass
Zack Simmons – drums
Goatwhore
guitarist Sammy Duet (formerly of Acid Bath and Crowbar)
is fucking stoked…not only because his cats
have apparently developed fine tastes in brutalic
black metal ("My cats freak out when I play Fog,
Through The Eyes Of Night! They’ll sit in front
of the goddamn speakers and chill out!"), but
because the notorious six-stringer has quite triumphantly
survived another Goatwhore outing. Fittingly titled
A Haunting Curse — an idea Duet's been toying
with since the band recorded 2003's Funeral Dirge
For The Rotting Sun at the allegedly haunted Noise
Lab Studios, in addition to over two years of various
band trials and tribulations — the disc serves
as the band's third installment of their signature
brand of blackened pummel, coming at you for the first
time via the legendary Metal Blade Records.
But
for Goatwhore, no studio effort comes without its
share of catastrophes. Where Funeral Dirge followed
a near-fatal van crash that left Goatwhore/Soilent
Green frontman Ben Falgoust temporarily confined to
a wheelchair and the very future of the band uncertain,
the creation of A Haunting Curse saw the New Orleans
four-piece — Duet, Falgoust, drummer Zack Simmons
and bassist Nathan Bergeron — fleeing the flood
waters of 2005's harrowing Hurricane Katrina. If there
is indeed a God, she's certainly no fan of the 'Whore.
But the say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
In the case of Goatwhore, they're stronger, harder,
meaner and pissed the fuck off. Goatwhore are back
with a magnified vengeance! But perhaps we should
rewind a bit….
***
Allegedly named after a mysterious encounter with
a rather uninviting stripper, New Orleans’ Goatwhore
formed in ’97. A slew of local gigs and word-of-mouth
interest earned the band a nation-wide cult following
(their many legions seen sporting the band’s
simple yet crafty merch design — a parody of
the Jägermeister emblem replete with a mighty
inverted cross — at death metal and black metal
shows coast to coast with pride). By 2000 the band
unleashed the mighty The Eclipse Of Ages Into Black
under the Rotten Records banner to ready and willing
ears.
For the next two years, the band toured incessantly.
Those who weren’t immediately pulled into the
band’s jagged ferocity on record were helplessly
battered by the band’s live intensity. Indeed,
the Goats are the quintessence of road warriors captivating
‘heads across the land with their manic buzzsawing
rhythms, dueling throat chaos and evil ambience. Forever
hostile, forever dark, forever evil…Amen.
2003 saw the release of Funeral Dirge For The Rotting
Sun. A slightly slower, brooding record steeped in
Satan, death and serpent references, the disc was
a direct reflection of the injuries Falgoust sustained
after a vehicular collision in 2002 (on the final
night of the Soilent Green tour). Falgoust miraculously
recovered and the band jumped right back into the
touring circuit to riotous approval.
***
2006: It's 75 degrees and sunny in St. Petersburg,
FL but within the pleasant confines of producer Erik
Rutan's increasingly popular Mana Studios come the
sounds of the apocalypse; tones of the rhythmically
sinister and fist-clenchingly METAL variety. It is
the audible battery of Goatwhore’s Metal Blade
debut A Haunting Curse. More molten than its gloomier
predecessor, the disc stays true to the band's original
irreverent Bathory-meets-Baal (the god of thunder)
in a bullpen sensibility with punkish resolve and
those inimitable Louisiana grooves for which the band
has become known. Songs like über oldschool "Bloodletting
upon the Cloven Hoof," the opening "Wear
These Scars Of Testimony" and "Silence Marked
By The Breaking Of Bone" are fast, dark and antagonistic,
Falgoust's commanding voice and challenging lyrics
adding knee-buckling severity to their collective
instrumental agility. Rhythms collide with stop-on-a-dime
accuracy and Duet's vexing riffs give things a torrential
horns-to-the-sky exigency. A Haunting Curse is here
to devour. You have been warned.
-
Liz Ciavarella/Metal Maniacs 2006
Discography:
A Haunting Curse – Metal Blade Records –
September 5th, 2006
Funeral Dirge For The Rotting Sun – Rotten Records
- 2003
The Eclipse Of Ages Into Black – Rotten Records
– 2000
