CD Review: Goatwhore – “Constricting Rage of the Merciless”

Goatwhore – Constricting Rage of the Merciless

Drawn in by their promo track for this new release I expected to enjoy this album, the 6^th full length from the U.S. death dealers, but unfortunately something went wrong!

While it retains a lot of heavy riffing and gruff vocals of old there is an undoubted polish to the production that has removed a degree of their previous raw ferocity. I found the riffs and structured sounding a little contrived in their thrashy repetitiveness, and while previous they had happily sat in some blackened death genre I felt more uncomfortable with elements of almost nu or modern metal accessibility bleeding into this overall collection.

Goatwhore

Could just be an inevitable evolution as the band try to keep a freshness to the sound, although they’ve perhaps always had this undercurrent of groove. In this respect I recalled the refinement of the recent Exhumed release (though to be fair that grew on me a little more) or even back in the day Carcass’s shift further towards eventual melodic demise with “Heartwork”.

This is still a strong and pretty relentless album, a shameless celebration of full on metal that may well satisfy a lot but not for me I’m afraid, I’d preferred the solidity of their last album. I will still be checking them out at next year’s Templesfest in Bristol so maybe live I can be more won over.