Disciples of the Goat

A warped, slightly comforting voice greets you, "Welcome," (and this is where the riffs start,) "to the worst nightmare of all... Reality!" It's from this point on that these Vineland, New Jersey natives clasp you in their thrash-tastic stranglehold and refuse to let go for the next 57 plus minutes. I'm here to tell you that you won't want them to release you either.

Disciples of the Goat is the first full length album from Morbid Cross, a four-piece thrash outfit out of, you guessed it: New Jersey. Home of thrash legends Overkill. While they may not borrow too heavily from the "Blitz"-crew I can tell you these four gentlemen know their way around the thrash genre like a blind man knows his way around a house he's lived in for thirty years.

Though Morbid Cross might wear their influences on their proverbial sleeves, or leather vested jean jackets if you prefer, they are not emulators, content to regurgitate the ideas of progenitors such as Kreator, Slayer, Megadeth, and early Metallica. No, these gents have successfully incorporated their influences into something, while reminiscent of the greats, wholly their own. The most direct comparison comes at the opening of "Cease to Exist," which sounds enough like the intro to "Black Magic" to let me know that, Yah! These guys like Slayer. But that's okay. It's not a blatant enough rip-off to make me dismiss the group out of hand which is what makes this album so brilliant. Morbid Cross don't lift riffs and melodies from their influences so much as they fill my nostalgic brain with whiffs of the riffs from the greats who came before them!

The guitar work on this album is crisp and crunchy. At times unfurling the speed flag of early German masters Kreator and Sodom and letting it fly freely, and at other times slowing things down to crunch and liquefy brain matter as brutally as any of the Bay-area greats did it back in the day. The drumming on the album is top notch and never loses time, keeping the entire affair on the tracks for the full ride, mostly. Bass duties are handled responsibly and never hinder the rhythm section from delivering the goods, though I would've liked the bass lines to be pushed a tad more forward in the mix The vocals absolutely SHRED throughout the entire album and never once take a back seat to the instrumentation. The vocal lines are delivered with perfect rasp-ish screams within an East Coast hardcore-ish theme. This is reckless, rowdy, and raunchy thrash metal that is as much a product of our current society as it is the culmination of the works of the masters who came before.

I've been around the metal block for a minute and I have to say I'm extremely impressed with this debut effort by Morbid Cross. The digital album is available on bandcamp, as is a copy of the VERY LIMITED CD, double-sided t-shirt, and beer coozie, all of which I ordered and received rapidly in the mail. Even came with some stickers and a hand written note thanking me for my support. I would advise you get on this elevator while it still sits on the ground floor. It won't be long before these guys get signed and I'll be one who is keeping his eye on where they go from here.