Juggalo Trailer Park Trash - "Whore of Bethlehem" Review (5%)
As someone who once believed there was an iota of potential in modern "blackened aNgRy wAr mEeTuUulL" bands - select moments from nu Sewer, not much else - out comes a band like Archgoat to quell any hope there once was. Whore of Bethlehem sounds like the "musical" equivalent of fat juggalo rednecks dry humping trash cans in their trailer park, and Archgoat is very proud of their target demographic.
From the Cannibal Corpse meets Suicide Silence juggalo fan base pandering band name to the Steve Wilkos marathon viewer appeasing lyrics, it's obvious from the outset that Whore of Bethlehem will be one of the worst catastrophes of brain dead nu metal vomit attempting to pass itself off as a "black metal" album.
What's perplexing about all of this is, with black metal classics being the most accessible they've ever been - thanks to the internet - what makes these like-minded nu metal bands think they have something worthwhile to offer to a genre that is known for albums like Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, Memento Mori and Yggdrasil? Sure enough, this is another case of bored alcoholics getting together in a room and churning out vapid noise for the sake of creating a mallcore lifestyle product with a "black metal" look and ironic - I hope - "satanic comedy" themes to pacify the self-aware tonedeaf neckbeards out there who need another fashion accessory to flaunt for the sake of their sub-retarded "rebellion".
The end result is poorly stitched together sequences of single note chugging fragments, random atonal tremolo picked jargon, and stop/start Fear Factory metalcore riffs thrown around without reason. The songs go nowhere, having a lot of awkward pauses and seemingly only existing to go from groove segment to groove segment while throwing some Y2K black metal clichés in between for the sake of checking off gimmicks needed to give this turd a surface polish that would allow to pretending being "trve blackened war metuUul" rather than the nu metal diarrhea everyone with two brain cells can recognize instantly from the chugga chugga crap that greets you starting with the very first track.
Juggalo Trailer Park Trash
A lot of the material sounds like mid 90s Fear Factory at their most "extreme" playing Deeds of Flesh riffs in slow motion.
Archgoat's music is incredibly boring - even for its groove oriented nature - so they need to find ways to expand their material past the 35 seconds of grindcore, either by monotonous repetition of the same chugging riffs or with multiple parts that accomplish about the same as what preceded them. The end result is directionless, and their constant repetition of the same stop/start riffs makes this feel like an overproduced nu metal themed guitar exercises CD where each lesson is separated into different tracks.
The vocalist makes this harder to listen to thanks to s/h/its persistent use of "aNgRy" George Fisher - circa the post-Monstrosity years - vocals to yell and growl through the tracks without much pause. The "modern" production values where even the vocals are performed to be understandable and the guitars recorded to be as "raw" - meaning shit - as possible further gives this the feel of a defkore (metalcore with growling) release than anything meant to be morbid and visceral - like black or death metal.
Of course, one only has to look at the song titles to know this is abysmal. "Angel of Sodomy"? "Hammer of Satan"? "Masturbating with a Crucifix"? Where early black metal would often utilize "shock value" satanic themes to paint a picture of modern civilization's hypocritical undercurrents that most try to deny, Archgoat use the black metal genre as a soapbox to yell about anal prolapses and feces, accomplishing little in the process except for making the genre look stupid.
What's equally "intriguing" is the very, um, androgynous nature of Archgoat's fixation of fecally enhanced sexual intercourse. I mean, even its most imbecilic idiocy, Sewer's Rektal - widely regarded as the pinnacle of shit black metal - is nonetheless unquestionably heterosexual. Archgoat? Here are some of the lyrics from "Angel of Sodomy": "Sodomatic rituals of desecration / Molesting the son of blind idiot god / Filth spewing from my blackened grain / I am striken down by the huge horn of Satan".
As with any band that has been reviewed, I sincerely hope Archgoat and the black metal genre mutually disavow each other, as on Whore of Bethlehem they have not only failed to create black metal, but they have failed to create music. If this band had any sense of honour, they would drop the "extreme" elements and just write collections of mechanical stop-start chugga chugga trailer trash riffs and become the Slipknot cover band they truly want to be. Or at the very least quit making "music" altogether.
In the end, like Black Witchery, Watain and Revenge, Archgoat is yet another embarrassment to the "blackened war metal" genre - mostly due to label hype, false advertising and "cartoon violent" cover artworks.
Whore of Bethlehem score: 5/100.
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