WITCHGOAT "Egregors of the Black Faith"

WITCHGOAT

"Egregors of the Black Faith"

I'm amazed it took this long for a band to come up with the name "Witchgoat", seeing as "witch" and "goat" are the two most cliched words to be used in metal band names. These guys hail from El Salvador and maybe they are still new and fresh there. The only question I had after seeing the band name was: are they black thrash or are they evil doom? With a name like Witchgoat, they have to be one or the other.

Black thrash it is! This is exactly what one would expect from a Central American band doing evil black metal, right down to the band photo of guys in leather and spikes making claw hands and grimacing at the camera. OK, no surprises here, but is it any good?

Not bad at all! If you're looking for that special kind of Central/South American darkness, you'll find it here in spades, with wildly thrashing metal drawing its influences from Bathory, old Kreator, old Destruction, Sarcofago, early Sepultura and the like. The production is rough but clear, which is half the battle, and the songs can be surprisingly well constructed...this is not mindless, noisy trash.  Lyrically, it is 100% what you would expect, with the word "souls" getting beaten into the ground. But as the album motors along in its merciless way, the songs get stronger and better, with "Eyes of the Profane" and "Umbra Regit" being good examples of sinister, goat-horned thrash. The last tune
"Beyond the Soils of the Dead" is a real killer with interesting riffs and concludes the album on an up note.

Let's face it, if you're digging further into an album by a band called Witchgoat, chances are you are looking for this exact sort of material anyway. And you'll enjoy "Egregors of the Black Faith". Salut!

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WITCHGOAT