I've known Washington D.C.'s Goetia for a while now and have enjoyed their series of highly regarded EPs from 2023 to 2025, bursting into the underground scene with a sort of boosted ferocity considering a band that barely existed a few years prior.
Debut full-length album Mortuary Cult takes advantage of the momentum and embraces a straightforward yet highly volatile take on death metal, influenced by the classic era of the genre's birth and the style of heavy thrash's bands from the late '80s and start of the '90s.
In this concoction of fast-paced riffs, frenetic solos and pummeling drums, you'll hear everything from early Kreator to Morbid Angel, and even the thrashy tendencies of Absu at times, capturing the unique savagery of the '80s extreme metal scene.
On top of that, the titles and cover art glorify the rites of the occult, bringing a record so well-oiled that it's simply difficult to not enjoy if you're and old-school metal fan. Goetia appear entirely uninterested in ingratiating themselves to external conception, and instead are focused on delivering pure frenzy.
Mortuary Cult's strongpoint is the consistency at which it delivers. It's not a museum piece despite the purposeful traditional framework, and the tracks almost never fail to bring down the hammer across a totality of 32 minutes.
A short introduction "At Eternity's Gate" brings forth fast-paced demolition a la Exhumed with "Lanterns of the Dead" and "Posthumous Execution", then Goetia slows down to expose their affinity for deathgrind grooves in the middle part of the record (self-titled track, "Earth Inferno" and more notably on the half of "Corpse Candle", the other half is crazy).
My favorite section off the record is in final tracks, and specifically the destructive yet remarkably focused sequence of "Bestial Tomb", "Excarnation" (the highlight track) and its transition to "Tortures in Time". The last piece "Eternal Samhain" is the longest on Mortuary Cult and burns out repetitively, ending a record that shows a deep understanding of the old-school fundamentals.
I particularly enjoyed the drum work (done by Nadia Tydings-Lynch of Blood Monolith, among others), and the horror-esque but not flashy aesthetics of the cover art. This debut album is meant for guiltless enjoyment, repetitive listens and appreciation of this sound's fountainheads. Hail Goetia.
Release: June 12th, 2026 | Carbonized Records
Rating: 4 out of 5
Website: Instagram
No comments:
Post a Comment