If Satan ever listens to music, then it can be certain that New Orleans black metal band Goatwhore is in his CD player, blasting at full volume for all the residents of hell to listen.
The dark lord probably is head-banging with devil horns raised in affirmation, chanting every dark lyric verbatim. The band is that vicious, and with their new album, “Funeral Dirge for the Rotting Sun,” the group now is turning its pitch-black demeanor toward Baton Rouge.
Goatwhore will assault the stage of The Spanish Moon on April 5 in hopes of turning a few locals to the dark side of New Orleans death metal — a scene that is home to Crowbar, Soilent Green and Acid Bath. All are bands with which Goatwhore shares members.
“I’ve always taken this project very seriously,” said guitarist Sammy Duet, also of Soilent Green. “This is definitely not a hobby or a side project; this is a very serious band. And we want to be known as a band, and not as Ben Falgoust from Soilent Green’s side band or Sammy Duet from Crowbar and Acid Bath’s band. I’m totally against that, we all are.”
Goatwhore in its own entity is comprised of singer Ben Falgoust, guitarist Sammy Duet, guitarist Tim Holsinger, bassist Pat Bruders and Zak Nolan on drums.
In 2000, the band released its Rotten Records debut, “The Eclipse of the Ages into Black,” an opus that rekindled the old-style satanic black metal of European acts like Cradle of Filth and Venom.
According to the band’s label, the album was an offering respite to purist metal fans who had been fatigued by the fancy, over-orchestrated music of Europe’s contemporary dark metal landscape.
With Goatwhore’s second release, the band delves into even more austere subject matter, surveying the sinister facets of the mind and how inner dark forces come to play, while uncultivated guitars barrel onward atop Falgoust’s demonically distorted vocals.
“I think we have made a very experimental step in our future,” Falgoust said. “We didn’t take too big of a step, but one to separate us more from the norm. Call it what you will, but we have no name for it. The music is more of a dirge of dark rock ‘n’ roll with an edge of old thrash metal. Maybe we have brought black metal a new edge or angle, the bastard version coming from America.”
While “Funeral Dirge for the Rotting Sun” is musically visceral and intense, the poignant and sometimes disturbing lyricism of Falgoust is equally cutthroat and passionate, sometimes leaving no room for imagination.
“A storm of swords to end my life (Take me)/ A storm of swords to end it all (Drown me)/ Lacerations from the sky to baptize my soul one last time/ Rising from these seas of boiling blood (My own blood),” he sings on “Baptized in a Sea of Swords.”
Other times, the lyrics are audaciously surreal and abstact, as is the case with “A Closure in Infinity,” where Falgoust sings, “A black hole of undivine nature for destruction of heresy/ The stellar cycle about to be sucked into the imploding dark star/ To resurface an early cycle of man for a new millennium/ Closure begins in collapse, dissolving into the raven giant.”
“Sometimes you have to look at words and paint a picture with them like nothing you have thought before,” Falgoust said. “A demon can be a trouble or a force of rebellion. It is just as you see it or how you have been taught to perceive it.”
This year, the band hired guitarist Holsinger of Big Easy metal band Crowbar, because of injuries Falgoust sustained while in a van crash touring with his other band Soilent Green last year. Nevertheless, Goatwhore went on and the hard work seems to be paying off.
“I think we were quite lucky to do some of the tours we did for the last CD,” Falgoust said. “Our final tour, before recording for the new CD, with GWAR was an excellent step for us to head into a new album. Touring is always great. For Goatwhore, it has gotten better with each tour.”