From the very beginnings, ‘Goat Cult Bizarre’ sets a tone of being a no compromise, straight to the point thrash metal, mixed with blackened passages and Death Metal elements and pretty much keeps that energy till the end of the record. Said Death Metal elements come from an abundance of blast beats and a harsh, crispy vocal style which leans more towards Death/Thrash.
There’s clearly a lot of detail put into the song structures in forms of various guitar leads layered on top of the riffs, like on the second track ‘Suffer’, as well as a sick detail from the drummer Aleksander Runic which instantly caught my attention: almost each drum fill is different then the other one and it can add a lot of color to a basic 4/4 time signature repeating riff.
The song titles at times feel like just straight forward combinations of ‘evil’ words which might get very repetitive, especially in Black/Thrash & Speed Metal. Song titles like ‘Blasphemous Sacrifice’ and ‘Evil Incantation’ just feel like randomly thrown together angry words taken from many previous metal releases which use the same exact words. In conclusion the track titles seem to lack some creativity but that’s enough of criticizing song titles, back to the music itself.
Though not present in every song, the whole thing is wrapped in a layer of Crust Punk/D-beat which is a very welcome addition to any extreme metal record. In fact, the more Punk influenced tracks were the highlights for me.
Overall the record sits comfortably amongst many same sounding Black/Thrash albums of 2020s and though it doesn’t do anything groundbreaking nor innovative it doesn’t have to at all. It’s meant to be primitive, aggressive and evil and it does all of that pretty well.
Last thing to add is I’m extremely glad they didn’t close up the album with a lengthy, slower tune with a fast part, which a lot of bands in this general style tend to do.
