The Worship

Wow! What a great, weird album. Amon Goeth are masters of many styles, it seems, and this album follows so many different paths simultaneously I don't know where to begin. It does such a thorough job of segregating styles into different passages within songs that I'm worried about this review slipping into dreaded track-by-track territory, but please don't think that it's a reflection of this little masterpiece feeling disjointed at all upon listening. Instead I'm just constantly impressed by the amount of different sounds they can join together consecutively into a great whole.....like listening to a really interesting mix tape.

Their overall sound on this album could be described as blackened death-thrash, but that's pretty useless. Their influences run a very large gamut but to my ears they seem into pretty open, stripped down mid-80s sounds, classics like CELTIC FROST, VENOM, or even MERCYFUL FATE, mixed with Eastern European dark folk sensibilities. And I can't believe no one else has mentioned this, but more than anything this album reminds me of early DEATH. They are not nearly as brutal, but their guitar tone, drumming, tempos, riff structures and vocals all have that same thrash-influenced sound just taken to the immediate next level......not too fast, not too murky or thick, just super chunky and solid as hell. There are a few riffs in particular on the "The Worship" and "Confrontation" that seem lifted straight out of the Schuldiner songbook. The drumming also goes a long way towards the DEATH reference: Karel "Bauhaus" Bosak doesn't always dazzle with his inventiveness or speed, but is unbelievably precise and just totally relentless.....his stop-starts on the double kicks are particularly impressive. And like Bill Andrews, he also will pull out the MAIDEN-esque disco beats once in a while that give the death-thrash guitars some room to breathe, as well as sporadically lending a more NWOBHM, fun party-metal kind of vibe to things.

Which is perfect because the DEATH comparison is only really valid for the first three tracks and parts of the last song. And at that, it's like a really groovy version of DEATH.......there's a lot more space in the arrangements (most songs really spread out over at least 8 minutes) or guitar solos than I could ever hear on "Leprosy," and some really funky bass fills to boot. As another reviewer mentioned, the bass is very high in the mix and I always appreciate that; here, it creates a lot of atmosphere and helps place all the instruments on equal footing, which lends the album the openness of production that I referred to. Every thing feels very deliberately placed in the songs both in terms of total sound and also in terms of style shifts.

And blackened folk-metal is yet another style AMON GOETH explore here, starting off with the intro to the album, the sounds of a ritual human sacrifice complete with medieval choir; it's the only metal intro that I've ever actually been creeped out or made uncomfortable by (in a good way). Following in that vein, a few of the songs have very well-executed acoustic guitar passages that are also old-world in sound, but most of their efforts in this direction are concentrated in the best two tracks on the album, "Black Professions" and "Judah's Priest," which remind me of SKYFORGER or maybe FINNTROLL, and are really the album's high-points in terms of creating dark atmosphere. But in the former track, even here the folk-black aesthetic is given an interruption by a rousing organ that sounds like it came straight from a fucking hockey forum or something. Organs and synths are present throughout the album, sometimes providing atmosphere and sometimes guiding the riffage, but like everything else this band does, mostly accomplished with versatility, skill and style.

Then there's "Hell's Angels," a track I'm not a particularly big fan of, that's just straight up hard rock.......is this what TURBONEGRO sound like? I don't know, and I don't really care too much. It's a good example of the album's one weakness which is the band's occasional lack of restraint: this song really does not need to be on here, nor does the almost 4 minutes of guitar soloing in the first track! Don't get me wrong, though: while listening to the whole thing, it's easy to just go along with the weaker moments because the band is obviously just trying to fit a bit of EVERYTHING into this album, a feat that I consider totally well accomplished. If you like huge doses of death-thrash; cheesy-but-satisfying (and fist-in-the-air-pounding) groovy touches; blackened folk-metal; Eastern European heavy metal in general; or atmospheric, slow-building metal; or if you just like fucking heavy metal at all, check out this album!

When I bought this, I expected it to be fairly standard-issue black metal as I had never heard it before, but it was at a very low price and I did know that Amon Goeth was on the NEP label, meaning it couldn't be that bad. It fortunately turned out to be quite worth the purchase.

Tt's somewhere halfways between the primordial forms of black, death metal and thrash. The vocals are even equal parts a hoarse rasp, a throaty growl and angry shout - the styles most commonly associated with those three subgenres. The riffs aren't as far removed from eighties metal as with most black metal from the mid-nineties, in fact any of those on the title track would be right at home on something released ten years before this. The most unusual influence here appears to be Czech folk music, most prominent on "Black Professions" but most other songs have their folk-inspired parts too.

The songs are all, with the exception of the straight-up heavy metal song "Hell's Angels", long progressively-influenced epics with lots of wonderful interplay between the instruments that unfortunately hasn't been the norm in metal since the 1970s. In fact, it would not be that big a stretch to say this is what mk2 Deep Purple would sound like if they were a Czech black metal band. Props must also be given to the production, it's murky enough to be sinister but clear enough that every instrument can be heard clearly.

The end result? A well-crafted, very distinctive album with an atmosphere like that of elaborate occult rituals taking place in sinister ruins of indeterminate age or perhaps great subterranean caverns rumoured by folklore to contain gateways to Hell itself. The only flaw I can find is that a couple of songs, most notably "In Love with Satan", are a little too long for their own good but everything considered the amount of wasted effort here is still very small. Calling "The Worship" definitely worth buying if you like dark, complex metal is quite the understatement.

To be honest I was surprised at how incredible this album really is, but I shouldn’t have had any doubt for a Czech band from Nazgul’s Eyrie which was highly recommended to me by the one and only Abominatrix! This is just a festival of astounding riffage, including some very unique and interesting ideas, and it is a perfect example of how there CAN be truly original, real METAL. I’m really not sure I can do this justice by going on about it, and it sort of defies description because it’s one of those works that exhibits subtle nuances in the context of deceptively simple elements. One of the greatest things about this is that it pays homage to and invokes the legendary sounds of the original forms of black metal while still exploring new ground that too many bands are afraid to or lack the ability to do. Unfortunately, my memory of this doesn’t involve impressions of separate tracks, so I can’t make comments on individual songs, because I didn’t care much to pay attention to the division of tracks as I was too engrossed in how good they all were, and too busy thrashing around in my seat! This is recommended highly with praise, for times sober or times smoking or slugging.