Canadian extreme metal bands, Goathammer and Empty Chalice, join forces to unleash a blasphemous assault of agonizing black metal upon the world with their brand new split, “From the Chalice of the Goat.” The songs on this split are inhumanely brutal and both bands prove to be fiendish forces with their sights set on crafting decimating compositions for listeners to become immersed in a sea of suffocating darkness.
Now, I am rather familiar with Empty Chalice having reviewed their debut EP, which I highly recommend people check out if they have not already. I think Empty Chalice does a tremendous job constructing raw old school sounding black metal, while also not becoming victims of that generic worship black metal sound which ends up becoming forgettable after a couple listens. With this split being my first introduction to Goathammer, I was really impressed by their sound and I liked the band’s savage old school approach to creating riffs. The band does an excellent job with their recordings by creating a vivid sounding ritualistic atmosphere.
Goathammer starts the split off with the song, “Sulphuric Breath of Astaroth,” which features a ferocious opening composition. The band’s drummer really unleashes a flurry of destructive sounding rhythms from behind the kit, thus sending a devastating shockwave across the musical landscape for the guitars to hammer out some sadistic sounding riffs. Also, the band’s vocalist delivers the lyrics with such malice and disgust that you cannot but relish in the hellish insanity that comes out of your speakers. The band also cover’s the song, “Disintegrator/Incinerator,” by Canadian death/thrash legends Slaughter (Not to be confused with that crappy hair metal band Slaughter that wrote some dumb song about flying with angels). I thought Goathammer did a solid job with the cover, especially in terms of how it complimented their overall sound as well as their malefic extreme metal mindset.
Empty Chalice contributes six tracks to the spilt with the first being, “Lamentations,” a very haunting introduction track that features a phenomenal acoustic guitar piece. From then on the band tears through short yet extremely unforgiving sounding tracks, all of which display the band’s terrifying talents. I would say that my favorite song from Empty Chalice was, “Poison (Venenum Est Numium),” primarily because of the ominous sounding introduction. You feel as though you are entering some primitive demonic dominion as the drums and bass unleash a hurricane of deafening destruction. Towards the end of the song I really liked the frantic sounding guitar solo, because unlike some guitarists who tend to get carried away with pointless shredding, Empty Chalice’s guitarist knows how to fit a lead part into an arrangement and actually leave an impact on the listener. Overall, Empty Chalice’s songs did not disappoint and their cover of Hellhammer’s, “Revelations Of Doom,” was a great choice to have as the final song on the spilt.
Both bands did a tremendous job on this split and I also thought that the two bands really complimented each other well in terms of their unforgiving and ruthless styles of songwriting. I can definitely see these two bands performing live and sending black metal hipsters fleeing for their lives as the music would prove to be too malevolent for those skinny jean wearing yoga obsessed humanoids who ride electric scooters listening to crap like Myrkur. In the end, I highly recommend people check out this split if they are into abhorrent sounding black metal that embraces the old school extreme metal mentality of unapologetic artistic expression.
Check out the full split below :
Enjoyed your review Robby.
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