Review Summary: Goatwhore is raging onward, their instruments merely tools to cut swaths through Christians and show God the true meaning of "smite".
When you write a metal record, your main goal is often more than just explaining your point of view; usually, it's also crafting solid music, emotive instrumentals, powerful vocals, and a seamless listening experience. The almighty
Goatwhore, with their fifth full-length album, seem to have done more than 'get the memo'. I think they were the ones who wrote it.
Blood For the Master is an incredibly emotive, powerful, seamless record that starts off with a blistering pace and ends in quite the similar fashion; yet, it deviates significantly enough from the introductory tracks to keep things interesting. Like the paradigm of a typical five-paragraph essay, it begins and ends at the same place, but has quite enough blackened meat and bloody potatoes to go around in the middle.
What we have here with
Blood For the Master is an incredibly-fun, almost addictive listen that allows us to feel the power and strength behind the band firsthand. It establishes several memorable guitar riffs in each track, building exponentially on their last record's guitar structure, while improving several faults and tying up the loose ends. It may be a 2.0 to some, but if that's true, it's a damn good one. There are legions of new concepts unleashed by this record, and it feels as if Goatwhore no longer binds them to their past inhibitions. While the introductory track "Collapse in Eternal Worth" has quite a lot in common with
Carving Out the Eyes of God's opener "Apocalyptic Havoc" - especially in terms of pacing - the tracks that follow deviate a good amount from the typical Goatwhore structuring. This allows the band's sound to flourish without becoming boring or dated, and keeps things interesting on a subliminal level. The conscious improvements like the new guitar treatment and the more forceful vocal presence are still paramount, but this change in structure has definitely worked out for the better.
The guitars themselves are masterwork.
Blood For the Master's guitar play is a more well-refined iteration of the screaming, shredding riffing we heard on
Carving, with a heavier influence on technically-demanding riffs and solos this time around. This is a logical progression for the band's sound, and it makes
Blood For the Master that much better of a record. The guitars are everything that I hoped I'd hear this time around, and more. It has this unique quality of sounding similar each time around, but changing structure and depth each song. This allows things to stay interesting when you try to study the guitars, keeping you on your toes for the next solo or riff change. It's a great technique, and shows the detail Goatwhore's placing into this album. There's also a decent amount of clean guitar passages throughout, where the vocals stop and the drumming slows down. These pieces are very evocative, and help set the mood of the song - and, often times, the mood of the songs that follow. The guitarplay on
Blood For the Master is not just impressive; it's paramount to the overall listenability and replayability of the record, and it serves as an indicator for the level of effort put into the sound design.
The dual-vocalists Falgoust and Duet return in this record, serving only to empower the rest of the sound with their blackened death metal blasphemy until we can't take any more of it. The vocals within
Blood For the Master are extremely enjoyable for reasons similar to why the guitars are; they take the aspects that worked for
Carving and tweak them, making them as close to flawless as they can be. The new policy on this record is
kill everything, and that's exactly what Falgoust and Duet do. The powerful mid-tone screams from past records makes a prominent appearance and sounds better than ever, especially since it's coupled with several high screams, low bellows, and haunting rasps. The rasps in particular are reminiscent of Goatwhore's origins, where they focused more on black than blackened death, and it sounds twice as awesome when paired with the mesmerisingly-powerful sound that we hear on
Blood For the Master. Truly, the vocals have reached new heights, even if the changes to the methods are seemingly-minor.
Sadly, the drum tracks have not changed much from
Carving. While this time, the drums are reinforced tenfold by the imaginative and powerful riffing,
Blood For the Master's drum tracks still do not lead the parade in ways you would hope they would. Instead, the guitarplay steals the spotlight. Even though the drums benefit from the superior production, the lack of imagination you might hear from the drum tracks as they follow the lead of the guitars is somewhat typical of Goatwhore - oddly disappointing on some level, seeing all of the changes that were made to the other aspects of the band's sound. The new method of structuring the tracks makes for more enjoyable drumming, but the lack of creativity is still somewhat self-evident. All records have flaws, though, and the guitarwork and vocals are more than powerful enough to make for an incredible listen, even in the wake of merely 'decent' or 'satisfactory' drumming.
Blood For the Master is an incredible blackened death metal record - a standout in Goatwhore's musical career. Hail Satan.
Recommended Tracks:
1. "Collapse in Eternal Worth"
2. "When Steel and Bone Meet"
4. "In Deathless Tradition"
6. "Embodiment of This Bitter Chaos"
8. "Death to the Architects of Heaven"
