Goatwhore – Blood for the Master

The day has finally arrived. “Blood for the Master” has been on my radar for several months now and was one of my most anticipated upcoming releases. I loved their last album, “Carving out the Eyes of God” so I’ve been avoiding hearing anything off “Blood for the Master” until I could hear the whole album in a listening environment where I could enjoy it properly.

Sometimes I’ll catch songs on Liquid Metal in the car and be disappointed by the sound on the first listen; but I wanted to avoid anything that might disappoint me about this release so I made sure not to hear clips or anything ahead of time. I don’t deal with waiting very well though, so naturally at 11:01 PM last night I was on my iPhone downloading “Blood for the Master” from the iTunes store. (I picked up a couple other albums too: “Black Mass Hysteria” by Knives Out (featuring Todd Smith of Dog Fashion Disco and Polkadot Cadaver), “Misery Wizard” by doom band Pilgrim and the self-titled album from Bréag Naofa.)

“Saving myself” for Release Day turned out to be very satisfying. I went to bed, while the tracks downloaded to my phone, knowing I would wake up with Christmas-morning-like anticipation of starting the day listening to new Goatwhore. I popped on the headphones this morning and sighed with relief as it immediately became apparent this album was going to live up to and possibly exceed my expectations.

“Blood for the Master” is a pretty heavy album, but at the same time it’s fairly accessible (from an extreme music perspective.) The pace ranges from chugging mid-tempo to fast and furious, all the while featuring the awesome guitar talent of former Acid Bath guitarist Sammy Duet. This dude plays some killer guitar. The vocals are harsh but very understandable and are capably handled by both Sammy and L. Ben Falgoust II. The album is intense and furious but also contains a healthy portion of groove as well; these ingredients mixed together make for a potent and formidable slab of killer heavy metal. The quality production on the album puts an extra shine and polish on there that I was surprised to hear as I had read they wanted to dirty-up this album. On the contrary, the production sounds quite good.

Now if you will excuse me I have to go back to listening to this album on repeat for the rest of today. Show these guys some support and pick up this album today! On an unrelated note I see they are playing the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio tonight. I hope they’ll throw out a tribute to Dime in that most unholy of metal venues.