Rating: 8.0

Country: Poland

Release Date: 2007

Record Label: Heerwegen Tod Productions

Track list:
1. Era of Antichrists Chaos
2. Nuclear Assault
3. Satanic Dark Legions
4. Awakening in the New Age of Hate
5. Z.O.G - Genetic Hecatomb [mp3]
6. Desolation Propaganda
7. The Great War Manifestation
8. End of All Life

Total playing time 48:35

Band Website: Goat Thron

Goat Thron - Selective Extermination

Funeral - Everything

When looking at the band name, album art, song titles and band picture one kind of expects some really nasty NSBM to start blasting out of the speakers once the cd starts spinning. And a cursory glance at this projects history confirms that it did indeed start out as raw black metal. However the current incarnation of Goat Thron is quite a different beast than what it started out as. After the death of its original founder Dagon, it was resurrected by his friend and co-conspirator Funeral and turned into an extremely harsh industrial power electronics project.

It doesn't quite start out as extreme as all that though, as the two opening tracks lull the listener into a false sense of security with rather calm industrialized ambient, with soothing background synth reminiscent of Funeral's more tranquil ambient project Sealed in Blood [review]. It's with the third track "Satanic Dark Legions" that the intensity first ratchets up, as distorted guttural vocals bark out commands amidst piledriver percussion and a pretty unsettling bass backdrop. As more discordant elements are introduced during the following two tracks the atmosphere plunges further into ever more unnerving territory. It quickly becomes evident that the build-up and compositional quality of this album are immense. With music like this it is all too easy to just loop a bunch of noisy tapes together, throw in some additional distortion, screeches and some synthy back drops and call it a day. Funeral however understands that even in something as anti-musical as industrial and power electronics you have to have an underlying structure and actual semi-musical movements. The track "Z.O.G - Genetic Hecatomb" for example contains actual crescendos of nerve wrecking feedback, bass and mechanical screeching.

Aficionados of this type of music will know what I mean when I compare this favourably with Brighter Death Now (around the time of Great Death) or a slightly less insane IRM and similar high standing death industrial projects. For those drawing a complete blank at these names, think of the soundtracks of the Silent Hill series. Yes, this is comparable to those, and yes this is equally screwed up. If the front cover didn't give it away, this is misanthropy in its purest musical form. And while the genocide glorifying pictures and song titles will be shocking to most people, the actual music does an even better job of shaking you out of your safe little comfort zone. It doesn't even employ things like percussions or surprising noises all that much, the swelling and ebbing of sound is enough to create this tangible feeling of hatred that pours forth like a torrent from the speakers.

Being active in the extreme metal community (in a theoretical sense at least) I often come across the sentiment that black metal, or death metal, or grind is 'the most extreme or darkest form of music ever'. They really aren't, since they still employ melody, harmony and similar well-known musical ingredients; meaning they are ultimately known and understandable musical objects, able to fit in with our ordinary perceptions of music. They sound human. Something like this though manages to more immediately project a certain atmosphere or event that seems wholly removed from human artificiality. While you technically know that it was made by someone, it doesn't come across as such and so it sounds less like music invoking extremity and more like the audial essence of extremity itself. Goat Thron is up there with the elite in these fields of musical experimentation in actually succeeding in this sense. Selective Extermination doesn't just sound misanthropic, it is misanthropy as such.

June 6th, 2008