415-345-0900
If any metal group truly savors the power of language, it's Goatwhore. Established in the late 1990s, the New Orleans four-piece draws its mammalian moniker from a drunken strip club trip taken by guitarist/vocalist Sammy Duet and friends. At the club, one of Duet's boorish buddies shooed off an unattractive, pigtailed stripper and called her a "goat whore," inadvertently birthing that name. In a similar, word-loving vein, Goatwhore's recently released sixth record, Constricting Rage of the Merciless (a striking title in itself), contains such grandiose, thesis-like tracks as "Nocturnal Conjuration of the Accursed" and "Poisonous Existence in Reawakening." Paired with this is vindictive death metal/black metal shaped in the shadows of Celtic Frost, Bathory, and Venom, and densely packed lyrics about revenge, pain, and meeting Satan. For a band whose early years were plagued with disaster — vocalist Ben Falgoust was temporarily paralyzed in an auto accident in 2001, and the whole group later had to escape Hurricane Katrina — things now look mercifully calm for Goatwhore, the apocalyptic hellscapes on its records notwithstanding.
415-345-0900
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