Ah, Goatwhore. It had been too long.
The band's warrior-esque touring regimen has been well-documented, but somehow, two years had past since our paths had last crossed. Then, they were scorching the earth in support of their watershed album, A Haunting Curse, inducing self-decapitation rituals in seedy caves across the continent.
Currently, the band are up to the same tricks, but this time touting their staggeringly heavy new disc, Carving Out the Eyes of God. And fucking hell, their timing couldn't have been better. Days prior to the band's stop in St. Paul, I married a beautiful, heavily-tattooed woman in the presence of my closest friends and family. The event was flawless--the weather was perfect, the atmosphere was phenomenal...it was ideal in every aspect.
Which is why an evening with Goatwhore was so critical at this juncture. My metallic Chi was in danger of becoming woefully imbalanced. Crushing riffs, seething hatred, boiling vitriol--I needed that shit.. A true agent of death can only handle so much idyllic bliss before his grasp on vehemence becomes tenuous.
Of course, before Goatwhore donned their gauntlets, a challenge of endurance was on tap. A couple of local strugglers mashed away in opening slots. An announced song title, "Tony Danza's Third Testicle," was enough to keep my colleagues and I at bay. Content to jack ourselves up on generic energy drinks and PBR while discussing 3rd tier fantasy football wide receivers, we patiently waited for retro-thrash contendersWarbringer to start pillaging. And when they did, they certainly thrashed themselves into a respectable furor--albeit an ultra-cartoonish one. "Total War" and "Systematic Genocide" were delivered quite convincingly, but unfortunately, the contrived and gimmicky nature of the rest of their material didn't scream, "buy my fuckin' CD," or even, "don't write us off as a trendy retread."
However, the next band on the bill, The Berserker, proved to be an absolute mindfuck. While their sound can grow quite tiresome on record, in live arena, it's quite the rush; kinda like shooting a rusty needle full of overcooked adrenaline into your eyeball. Repeatedly. Like, 280 times per minute. Which is pretty cool if you have the stomach for it, but even the stoutest of industrial deathgrind freaks have to draw the line somewhere. By the time vocalist Luke Kenny was in full-on disgruntled/misunderstood artist mode ("This is the last time we'll be playing here, so enjoy these last five minutes..."), I was hitting the wall, the sun was eking over the horizon, and Dallas Clark's apeshit YAC stats were of increasing intrigue.
Needless to mention, anticipation for Goatwhore was high--and when the band finally took the stage, they dominated in expected fashion. Even in the face of a lackluster Monday turnout and some unexpected mic issues, the band gnashed and thrashed through a furious set of trademark blackened fury. Neckwrecking stuff, indeed--and if my own cranial stump hadn't been ravaged by years of reckless, alcohol-fueled 'banging, I'd have had my skull on a swivel for the entirety. (Such are the travesties of aging, friends. The mid and late twenties harvest permanent bangovers and serial Ben Gay abuse. My vertebrae can no longer do the devil's work.)
Before the band waged their ironclad assault, I managed to corner vocalist Ben Falgoust to hash out a few inquiries. His affable, talkative demeanor is markedly different than his dominating, commandeering onstage embodiment--not to mention a serious contrast to my over-caffeinated, Northern Boy spasms. But he comes across as a serious metalhead, one that's not only stoked about fronting an absolutely killer outfit, but stoked about heavy metal in general. From a lowly perch on a Lowertown curb, we spoke of classic albums, Satan, and the importance of rocking the fuck out.
MR: Let's start with the cliched opener--how's this current tour going for you guys?
BF: It's going pretty good, man. Today's an off-day for Obituary (Ed: the headliner on the band's current tour)--but instead of taking a day off, we try to play to play shows on our own, or with other bands on the tour. We have Warbringer and The Berserker here tonight, who are on the Obituary tour as well. But so far, the whole tour's been really good, man. We just came out of Canada this morning--we were up there for like eight days, and those shows were fuckin' awesome. Now we're back in the U.S. for four days, then we go into eastern Canada for three days, then cut down the East Coast. The weather's perfect right now, which is always good. Sometimes you tour in the dead of winter, and fuckin' everything is iced over and covered with snow; sometimes you tour in the summer, and it's brutally fuckin' hot. We usually sleep in the van, so right now is awesome. We can pull over, shut the vehicle off, and just kinda crack the windows a bit...cool breeze from there, man.
MR: Right on. What's in store for Goatwhore after this current jaunt is done?
BF: We're pretty much set up for the rest of the year. We finish this October 10th...well, actually, this tour goes 'til October 4th, but then we do six more shows with The Berserker and Warbringer to finish up. And then we go home for about a week before going out to the East Coast to do a couple shows with Eyehategod and Pig Destroyer. And then we come home from that, and on November 6th we leave for like a week and a half with Municipal Waste. And then we come home from that for about seven, eight days before going to Europe with Skeletonwitch and Toxic Holocaust 'til about December 20th. Then we're in talks about doing something in January, but we're not too sure yet. Trying to sort out some things.
MR: Staying busy as usual, it seems.
BF: Yeah, well, the record's fairly new, so we've got a lot of work to do with it. I mean, we did a lot of work with A Haunting Curse, like two years of steady touring, so we really need to hit it up. We're hoping that we get a little bit more opportunity with some different things, you know, to kinda expand...well, whatever, an audience, or get in front of different people. Just because you play a style of metal...I mean, metal is so separated even internally as a scene; you have your hardcore, your metalcore, your thrash metal fans, your death metal fans. So a lot of it gets split up. I feel that sometimes Goatwhore has an open angle where it can be offered to more varying fans. So if we can do different kinds of tours, it gives us that chance to open up a little more. You know, they're always saying that Goatwhore's a black metal band. Sometimes that sticks you in a department where somebody says, "Well, what kind of band are they?" And then they go, "Black Metal." And then they're like, "Oh, well, I'm not really a black metal fan..."
But they don't really know the gist of it. When asked to define black metal, some people think of the Dimmu Borgirs, the Cradle of Filths, the whole symphonic kind of black metal. And Goatwhore's more of the traditional, early Celtic Frost/Venom kind of style. So it gives it a different element. So I think when we're able to do different kinds of tours, it opens up people to say, "Oh, well I thought they were black metal...?" because so many people lock into grids with it so much.
MR: The new record definitely rocks that old-school vibe; one could even say it's blatant Celtic Frost worship.
BF: Well, everything you listen to from Goatwhore you can hear total Celtic Frost worship from. It's definitely a band that's infulenced us greatly, and if there had never been a Celtic Frost, there wouldn't be a Goatwhore at this point. It was just such a serious influence.
MR: We metalheads love subgenres...in the interest of pigeon-holing, would you say Goatwhore has soemthing in common with the current crop of blackthrash bands, like Absu, Destroyer 666, Desaster, etc...?
BF: I'd say we have commons with that. But also, too, with the new record, we also have commons with some of the newer thrash things, even like Warbringer. Or Toxic Holocaust. Or Municipal Waste. I think we have that kind of angle where we can appeal to that kind of crowd as well. Or maybe I'm wrong, you know? But that's why we're out there and doing those tours, because you never know what can become of it.
MR: How, then, are the new songs coming across live?
BF: They're coming across real good, man. We're playing like six of 'em in the set; the majority of the set is newer stuff. With Obituary, depending on some of the shows, sometimes we don't get to play a full 45 minutes--sometimes it's only 30. Then the set would consist of six new songs and two older songs. We're not trying to do it to disrespect our old-school fans--fans that have always been following us--but I guess we're just really into the new record and we just want to push that angle as much as possible. And it's difficult sometimes when you put a new record out. Sometimes the people aren't...into it immediately. I've noticed that too, like when I'll go see a band play, and I've got their new record--and I'll usually jam out to it for a while, so I'll know it pretty well--but you get there and people are more intent
about the older stuff, you know? And it's kind of been reversed (in our case). People have really grasped onto the new stuff and it's getting a good reaction.
MR: Well, the new stuff has got a real live quality to it. I mean, A Haunting Curse was a fuckin' rad album--it was my favorite album of 2006--but the new stuff is a lot chunkier and thicker and riffier.
BF: Well we wanted that with the guitars. We were saying, god, if you could take that guitar sound and put it on A Haunting Curse, it would be fuckin'...way more lethal than it is, you know? A Haunting Curse had a lot more speed to it. On the new record, we were more focused on...well, Sammy and I were talking about it one day, and he made a comment about it and he said, "...on the next record, be light on the black, heavy on the metal." We're going back to the roots of metal and the roots of things we grew up on. Early Judas Priest, bands like that. Where there's more of a rock and roll element mixed with metal. We like to call it black n' roll.
MR: That's...fuckin' very cool. 'Cause I think, too often, a lot of recent bands are too focused on brutality, pushing things over the top...
BF: Brutality, being too technical...I mean, I love bands like that, but then all of a sudden it becomes a popular thing and there's just a swarm of so many of them that want to do it. And it's like that with anything. Like the thrash thing that's kinda revived right now. All off a sudden you're seeing a swarm of bands doing that, but then you have the few that come out of that--they pull it off right and then bring it forward. It's like that with any kind of style, really.
MR: Going back to that aforementioned old-school vibe, which I think has become more pronounced lately--how much of that came out via the shift in your rhythm section and the way they approach the writing process?
BF: It comes from them a lot. I think, too, that when you go through member changes, it's difficult. Because you have Sammy, who provides a lot of the riffs, and then the drummer, who provides the tone and the momentum of how that riff is going to actually be. You can bring any riff to any drummer, and it's going to be different with every single drummer. And to find a drummer that resembles or fits the idea of the drummer you had before is a very difficult situation. I think the way Sammy and Zack (the new Zack, because our first drummer was named Zak) fell in together was just awesome. It fell into place perfectly. I think the new Zack also worked with Sammy more, and progressed the rhythm structure out even further than before. I mean, our old drummer was really good and everything, and he had really good ideas, but at one point he just didn't seem like he wanted to tour and do things at the same level as we wanted to do them.
When Zach came in to audition for the band, it was awesome. Right away when we played it was like, "Wow." He really falls into that pocket; he has that rhythm structure. And he doesn't try to be fancy. When you have an easier riff--and it just needs to be something basic and just grab you--he doesn't go all crazy with it. Whereas some drummers would be, "Oh yeah, I wanna do all this shit too." It's like, don't destroy the feeling of it, you know? He's more base like that with the feeling thing. Some drummers, especially with the tech/brutality bands, it's just like...kakakakakakat-dunddundundun-kakakakatak....and then they get up to a point to where they have to play something for a slow-but-catchy part, and they're almost lost. It's definitely a feeling fuckin' structure, man. And the way those two work together is awesome. It falls into place really well.
MR: A killer example of that is the first song on the new record, "Apocalyptic Havoc," which kicks total ass. We're you pleased with the way the video for that track came out?
BF: Yeah! We did it with Dave Brodsky, whose did the last two videos from A Haunting Curse ("Alchemy of the Black Sun Cult" and "Forever Consumed Oblivion"). He's an amazing dude. Our budget's not really that great, though--we'd love to be able to go at it with just a huge budget because he's got such awesome ideas. But for what we go to him with, and for what we can afford, he does a fuckin' amazing job, and we're pretty happy about everything he does.
MR: Last time I saw you guys was about 2 years ago with Arsis, and you closed the set with "Alchemy of the Black Sun Cult." And you prefaced the song with some banter regarding the video. Obviously, I can't remember the exact quote, but you said. "I know a lot of you might not think too highly of that kind of thing, but we're doing our best to spread Satanism throughout the mainstream," or something to that effect. How much of that statement is tongue-in-cheek and how much of it is stone-serious?
BF: (laughs) Well, internally within Goatwhore, Sammy is the Satanic-based edge of the band. He believes in the structure of it and everything like that. I don't have any kind of higher power, but I'm intrigued by the occult and the darker things in life, so that's where my angle comes from. So we kind of feed off each other and build like that. The thing about it is, if you look now, there's not many 'evil' bands in metal. There's a lot of Christian fuckin' metal bands. It reminds me of when I was younger, and when Slayer put out Reign in Blood--that's really showing my age, actually, but when they put out Reign in Blood it was just like, "Wow. This shit is fuckin' wicked as hell." And that record is fuckin' amazing. It's just one of those things where sometimes, it's needed. It seems like there's not many of those bands right now. That's what we're here for. We need to bring the evil back into the metal scene where it needs to be.
MR: Do you think all the Christian metal out there right now is watering things down?
BF: Well, it just...you know...to me, I have no problem with it, because there are few of bands of the Christian type that I'll listen to. To me, it doesn't matter whether you fuckin' believe in God or you don't. Hatred is the same across the board. And the way they spew what they spew with their lyrics, it's still a form of hatred. You can't deny it; it's a human ability to be pissed off or be mad about something and project it. Whether you believe in a god or a devil, it doesn't make you any fuckin' different. But I just see a lot more dispersal of those Christian kinds of metal bands and things like that, and I'm just not a fan of the whole religious thing. That's another deep-rooted thing when I write lyrics and things. I have a serious hatred for religious structures. It's a shame that mankind, through the years, can't see how much trouble it has caused over anything--wars, things like that--and they still fuckin' follow it and embrace it as much as they do today. You'd think man would progress and be more intelligent about things, and yet it seems like he's declining, not gaining any knowledge from the past.
[Photos shot by Jordan Campbell; chopped and 'shopped by Sandra Pederson]