I know, right? This metal
obsession with goats is getting a little carried away.I've reviewed albums with goat vulva and goat
semen either in the album title or band name.And I did a run of reviews a while back where all the bands or album
titles had “goat” in their name.There
seems to be no shortage of bands dedicating themselves to the idea that goats
are somehow Satanic.I haven't known a
lot of goats, but they seem pretty mellow to me.Who knew?
Goat Semen are an
interesting band.They have been
prowling around Peru
for 13 years now before finally getting the opportunity to release this, their
debut album.They released a demo and
have been on a few splits, but this is them shooting their first load, so to
speak.Many thanks to the fine folks at Hells
Headbangers for this release.It's
another shining example of how good Central and South American metal really
is.Oh, and the album title?If you're not up on your Latin, it means “I
Am Satan”, so these guys are just not messing around on any level.When you've waited 13 years to unleash your
music on the world, you apparently go for broke.
So what does Goat Semen
sound like?This is brutally wonderful
death metal, the kind they don't make too often any more.A lot of death metal has acquired tinges of
melody, or black metal, or metalcore.Nothing wrong with any of that, but this is the pure stuff, the vrai
de vrai as they say in French.Pummeling drums lead the assault along with buzz saw sounding guitars, a
singer who sounds like he's gargling glass and comes up with all kinds of
vocalizations that shouldn't come from a human throat.The bass holding everything down somewhere in
the mix.The production is clear enough
that you can hear pretty much what is going on, but nowhere near what you would
call pristine.If you like this stuff,
its 39 minutes of pure bliss.That's the
other good thing.They don't weigh this
down with 15 songs.They get in,
destroy, and then they're out.
Favorite tracks for me are
“Holocausto”, “Altares De Pandemonium”, and the album masterwork, “Hambre,
Peste, Guerra y Muerte”.As I've said
before, I'm a big fan of songs that sound like their titles, and “Holocausto”
and “Altares De Pandemonium” both deliver in big ways.“Altares” especially is just 4 minutes of
batshit crazy.And “Hambre” is an
amazingly good song.Over 10 minutes in
length, it keeps going and growing and mutating and never gets old because it is
so good.My only regret is that I don't
speak Spanish so I don't understand what most of it is about.Most likely nothing good for mankind.
Go out and buy this on CD or
vinyl, or both, and then you can utter a phrase you probably never thought you
would: “Hey man, why don't you come over and we'll spin some Goat Semen”.
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