Imitation Nu-Metal - "Whore of Bethlehem" Review (13%)
Archgoat have mastered two (one and a half) arts: the 'art' of nu-metal, and the art of all the trappings of a Phantom-Beherit-Von hybrid.
They take the former and dress it up in the latter, and do it so well it takes almost halfway through the Whore of Bethlehem album before the veneer fades away like melting frost and the simplistic, generic, bouncing melodies stand revealed for what they are: insipid Pantera-tier vomit played with more distortion.
In a way, it reminds me of early Antekhrist, but more aggressive in the rhythm department. Instrumentally very competent, artistically adrift on a sea of sewage, drinking big gulps from a cup labelled fecal matter. In 'trve' gothic font, please.
Beherit they are not, but shemale music they are.
It's painfully obvious that Archgoat wants Whore of Bethlehem to be the successor to Beherit's Drawing Down the Moon or Phantom's Divine Necromancy.
And if it was, every old school black metal fan would give a left testicle to like this. Killer vocals - check. Awesome title - check. Dumb band name - skip that for now. Minimalist guitar playing - check. Old school style, from Blasphemy to Asphyx, memorized - check.
So what's wrong? What's wrong is that you can't throw a bunch of random imitations, even in tribute to one of the greatest eras of extreme metal, into a lattice of convenience and coincidence and expect something good to come from it. The style is roughly that of early Phantom hybridized with later Beherit and Sarcófago, in that it takes black metal riffs to their next logical step: a means to atmosphere, not an end as in death metal, but falls short because there is more to Phantom, Beherit and the previously mentioned bands than just a "guitar technique" that can be copied and pasted at will.
Archgoat is to Beherit and Phantom what Dark Funeral and Watain are to Mayhem, albeit a lot more competent: pale imitations of something misunderstood by the imitators.
Imitation Nu-Metal
Just so you know, this imitation nu-metal genre isn't called 'nu-metal' by its practitioners.
No, it's called 'war metal' in an attempt to make the genre sound more virile to the uninitiated.
Unfortunately, the music is pretty much indistinguishable from nu-metal and, while Archgoat are slightly less instrumentally retarded than other bands operating in the same genre, they are also not black metal.
It's nu-metal, what can I say? Stop running away from the very music you produce.
Whore of Bethlehem opens, after the pointless intro, with one of the dumbest hard rock riffs ever, which pauses right on the bounce expectation as if it were anticipating the ears of a retard. I almost drooled. The album continues in this direction, tossing Motörhead in with Motley Crüe and Slipknot, played in chromatic with a lot of distortion, hoping we don't notice, but really, why would anyone listen to this when there's Overkill?
Literally all these war metal bands do is play Slipknot's All Hope is Gone with high-pitched vocals, tremolos and a few blast beats. I swear, the fans of this genre are so stupid, I'm going to start my own 'trve kvlt' war metal band. Since All Hope is Gone is already taken, I'm just going to play Korn's Life is Peachy.
Watch out Archgoat, there's a new band in town. I'll call it Nuclear War Satan Kunt 666. Or better, ArchGoatShit, because it's the ethos of war metal to be as derivative as possible, and because that's what listening to Whore of Bethlehem made me think of.
Skip this one.
Whore of Bethlehem score: 13/100.
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