Label: Brazilian Ritual Records
Date: May 16th, 2024
After the Peruvian one, it’s now time to milk the Brazilian goat. Though, considering the suffix in this particular moniker, this might not be the best idea.
On a serious note, the first thing I needed to check was the meaning of the title. No doubt this is the perfect way to announce the final step in the musical career of a band. Given the circumstances and the passing of Sabbaoth, the band’s founding member and spiritus movens, it could’ve easily been true. However, it is not. The album’s title and the opening track, “The End Is Nothing”, are messages in exactly the opposite direction. The end in question is nothing but a physical one. Sabbaoth keeps living in the legacy of fierce blackened death metal, war metal and metal in general, while the legend is still being spread by his brother in arms Virrugus Apocalli and the two-men barbarian horde comprising of MGM.666 and Necro Abhorrence. The trio has put together a fitting eulogy for a fallen brother and, at the same time, proclaimed the continuation of hostility towards the despicable humanity.
And what a eulogy it is! “End” is a proper devastating explosion. Relentless and… Sophisticated. Let me explain…
Just like there was a whole lot of spectacular science necessary for an extinction-level blow over Hiroshima, there was a need for thoughtfulness behind “End”. Metaphors aside, “End” is not a neanderthal display of primitive metal, though it comprises of a good volume of primal and raw riffing and simple, yet thunderous blasting. Using those as a basis and a warning sign that none shall be spared, there’s a lot more to hear on this album. Starting from the opening track “The End Is Nothing”, its symphonic opening and a menacing but still darkly melodic guitar lead, stemming directly from the glory days of Scandinavian black metal, Goatpenis doesn’t let go. The tracks do, however, swerve around between the overly black and death metal ones, with little actual amalgamation into a coherent unity. That might be the one and only negative note for “End”, since the two cover tracks (Blasphamagoatachrist covers, both of them) show the combination of the two, though in a definite bestial war metal style, which steers away from what Goatpenis heeds to, on this album. While on the subject of the two covers, how weird is must be for Virrugus Apocalli to cover his own side project with his primary band!?
Anyway, right after the black metal opener, comes “Heavy Scum” which is all but a product of old Floridian death metal. Deicide, these days, would kill for such a strike to be found on their record. “Miles Ignotum” even dives to grinding depths and not just because of its length doesn’t reach two minutes mark.
Other tracks contain all the needed ingredients for both of the extremes that, nominally, form Goatpenis’ sound. Like “S.W.D – Colossal Execution”, which is an example of a song where the two styles are more successfully merged together. Or its follower, “Dante’s Inferno Living Cemetery”, which holds within a certain dark atmosphere, that was probably a surprise even to the band members themselves, when they stumbled upon it in the midst of horrendous destruction of “End”.
Aside of those, rest are fairly easy to comprehend assaults upon the sonic surroundings of their listeners. Goatpenis are not the ones to hold anything back and so their new album drives forward forgetting the brake pedal. As a band which is basically forced to open the new chapter in their story, “End” is a beginning both they and their fans alike can be extremely happy about.
