Goatburner presents its second album.
Entitled Fatal, it is the fruit of a collaboration between Finnish duo Kaos (guitar/vocals, Rotten Sound, Morbid Evils, Age of Woe) and Spider (drums, Skulmagot, Ratface), and will be released in 2023 by Time to Kill Records.
The album opens with Danger! and its introductive sample, quickly followed by a thick rhythmic beat and some greasy howling. The Old School sound allows for a few wilder accelerations in this jerky rhythm, as on Pool of Blood, where blast constantly bludgeons us, barely allowing the raw ranting to appear. There’s a disturbing break, followed by an oppressive heaviness before the final acceleration, and then the strange sample that precedes Disaster and its equally aggressive approach, which also promises some slower, Sludge-influenced parts. The rhythm remains as violence-focused as Attack, which lets a swarm of flies fly over a corpse before the former bloom in the background, creating a suffocating dissonance before being joined by cavernous screams and drums. The rhythm builds up fairly gradually, then finally explodes again before Revolving Reaper takes over, starting with its scream of pain and throbbing riffs. It doesn’t take long for the fury to emerge again from this mix, leading us to Lobotomized, where the operation probably doesn’t go as smoothly as expected, given the hellish slowness of the track’s first part. The rhythm explodes without warning all at once and hits us continuously until Morbid Angle takes over with a similar power, where the instruments harmonize to leave us with only a single lull before the final sample. The morbid howls become wilder on Hateful Beaks, where they once again mingle with blast and the frantic rhythm, before calming down and returning on Blender Bender, where the duo bring out a chaotic sound that speeds up or slows down at will, creating an ever-surprising rhythm for this long track. A chainsaw and strange keyboards accompany us through to Dismemberment, the final track, on which the musicians use much the same recipe to bring the album to a close in pure violence, just as it began.
With its sudden rhythmic explosions, Goatburner keeps an unexpectedly virulent violence, letting Fatal borrow from its most aggressive roots as well as from grimy Sludge influences. The mix remains a success.
75/100