I don't know what it is about
Mary.
You know, Jesus' mom?
If you believe in the whole virgin birth,
Immaculate Conception thing, there was no way she was a whore.
Yet she receives almost as much scorn and
derision from the metal community as the Savior himself.
Along come this band, Whore Of Bethlehem, to
add to it.
I'll just add this to the
very long list of things I will never understand.
This band though? These guys I
get completely.
Hailing from Austin, Texas, these
gentlemen are another of the really, really good metal bands from the Lone Star
State.
They are right in my wheelhouse.
If you love you some Behemoth, Belphegor, and
Watain, you'll be absolutely head over heels for these guys.
They have a pretty fantastic mixture of death
and black flavors of metal, and they blend the two styles so well that tracks
flow from one to the other and back again with ease.
They have this blend down and they crush.
They've got a singer who sounds
as though he's gargling battery acid and enjoying it.
Their drummer is a beast, with blast beats
and fills and all manner of demonic battery going on behind the kit.
Guitars and bass lock in on some killer riffs
and really deliver.
There aren't a lot
of solos, per se, in this type of metal, but don't let that allow you to think
that they don't have any chops.
It takes
a lot of skill to deliver technical riffs and not sound like a robot, and these
guys have it.
As far as songs go, these are
all brutal.
My favorites are the title
track and album opener, “Detest The Belief”, “Christ Crusher” and “Nocturnal
Hauntings”.
They hit my sweet spot,
hammering and blasting away in blackness, then moving effortlessly into more
death style passages.
The songwriting is
very good.
The songs all sound like they
know where they want to go as opposed to just a bunch of riffs pasted
together.
A lot of bands can write
killer riffs, but your songs have to be a little more than that if you want to
separate yourself from the crowd.
What I
can make out of the lyrics sound appropriately evil and in total opposition to
Christianity, so they've got that locked down too.
I don't know what it is about Texas that brews up some
seriously good metal.
Maybe its the heat
all the time.
I know that would probably
piss me off enough to be in a band like this.
Hopefully this album, which is self-released, will catch the attention
of a label, because these guys certainly deserve to be signed.
In the meantime, go to Bandcamp and check
them out.
- ODIN
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