WITCHGÖAT - Egregors Of The Black Faith
March 1, 2019, 5 years ago
(Morbid Skull Records/Hell Productions)
“Central American blackthrash.” That's all you have to say to have me standing at attention, ready for whatever command comes next. In the case of El Salvador's Witchgöat, what comes next is a 40-minute rager of a debut, Egregors Of The Black Faith (note to self: figure out what an “egregor” is, implement it as potential nickname) proudly putting the blinders on and just blasting through its eight songs proper.
The band utilizes an agreeable production sound for the genre at hand, keeping things nasty but also clean enough to hear what's going on, and what's going on are riffs that are equal part Nifelheim and cranky Sodom, pure frantic Germanic thrash fed through a more modern blackened death sensibility. Things get martial here, they get more black or death there, but it's mainly raw blackthrash through and through, and this band do it as well as anyone, and better than many. This whole album just races past, and it's almost like that suddenly super melodic riff halfway through the last song (I'm not making this up) is there to troll us all a bit, just to say, “Hey, we can use melodies to create actual music” for about 20 seconds before the thrashing metal mania begins again, taking us to the end of this killer album.
