Ghoulgotha - The Deathmass Cloak

Ghoulgotha

The Deathmass Cloak

by Jack Webb at 13 February 2015, 10:50 AM

Doom-laden Heavy Metal is a fickle beast. Too much riff-worshiping and you sound like a blatant student of the school of SABBATH. Too little and you sound like you are stretching out a single idea to its breaking point. So where exactly do GHOULGOTHA fit into this spectrum?

If the album artwork doesn't give it away, this is a pure-blooded 60 minutes of hatred and occult worshiping. Melting together Doom and Death Metal into an abominable beast, that injects you with a maelstrom of emotion. The lyrics here are pure evil, enough so that you can't help but give off a maniacal smirk as each track progresses. Sarantopoulos manages to straddle the gap between harsh, gritty vocals and psychedelic storytelling very well.

An album like this wouldn't be worth a second listen if the mix falls into muddy, low range melodrama. Whilst the erratic and somewhat out of place lead guitar runs on “A Neck for the Nameless Noose” can take you out of the atmosphere that preceding tracks have already built up, the pure savagery on “Austere Urns” is pitch perfect for what this album aims at.

Everything is backed up well with Koryn’s dynamical abilities behind the drums. Again bridging the gap between blast-beats and almost jazzy grooves. Making each guitar riff sound ten times as meaty and it often adds in a sense of familiarity when the music takes a more experimental approach to Doom Metal. Some tracks, especially “Cartilage Imperfect”, would not sound out of place on a DOWN album. Showing that GHOULGOTHA are far more than the one trick pony.

If someone was to take Altars era MORBID ANGEL, and inject them with tranquilizers you would end up with what GHOULGOTHA have here. It is pure brutality that can both lull you to a smoke filled land, but also grab you by the throat and tell you who is in charge.