Desecration of Virgin

Many bands have a tendency to wear their influences so proudly on their sleeves that there’s no need for guesswork and wondering what they’ll sound like. Such is the case with Goatchrist666, a dirty and blasphemous black metal act from Thailand. The aptly named demo, “Desecration of Virgin”, was released in 2011 by the infamous Witchhammer Producitons: yes, the same place that released countless other blasphemously dirty black metal albums from the likes of Abigail and Sabbat and their ilk. Again, playing off of the what to expect springboard, with song titles such as “Christ Disgusting” and “Goatomic Holocaust Hell Command”, you should know what to expect. While this is not a long release by any means, it shows exactly what the band is about. The entire run time here is slightly over eleven minutes, with the longest track at a little over three minutes.

Taken at face value, Goatchrist666 plays a speedy mix of dirty yet thrashy, chugging riffs, gnarly blast beats and raspy, shouted vocals, all calling to mind the likes of Hellhammer, Sabbat and early Bathory. There’s a kind of angsty, juvenile charm to their approach. The music is dirty and simplistic, blasphemous and bashingly fun. The drums are fast paced blast beats for most of the album, with a few notable exceptions, like the chorus section on “Destroy Blasphemy”, which slightly slows things down into an almost hardcore stomp. The guitars are dirty, distant and jump from chugging thrashiness into exceedingly fast trem riffing. The vocals actually remind me of a grindcore singer attempting black metal. The vocals are basically somewhat intelligible raspy shouts with the occasional belched shout thrown in here and there. There’s not much variation between each track here, as repeated listens begin to run the course of monotony. Given that there’s only eleven minutes of material though, that’s to be expected.

“Desecration of Virgin” is nothing new or blatantly special. Fans of dirty, Neanderthal black metal will dig this, but, believe you me, you’ve heard this all before. Goatchrist666 will need to work on some variation if they are going to keep your attention for an entire album, but as a short demo release it works rather well. I don’t want to say that the band is just brainlessly bashing their instruments, but the appeal here is more for the dirty and blasphemous approach rather than the stellar instrumentation. This is a fun release that is just slightly above average: this is fun while it’s on, but there’s not much here to bring you back for repeated listens. Recommended for fans of Hellhammer, Gravewürm and the like. Turn on and bang you head.