After three years and as many EPs, Washington, D.C.’s GOETIA welcomes us into the Mortuary Cult on its first full length release. I’m blindfolded, mind, having never heard the band before, but given their previous choice of covers [KREATOR’s ‘Ripping Corpse’ and ‘Don’t Burn The Witch’ from VENOM], one hopes for at least a spark from these mighty torches has found its way into what we’re about to hear.

Ahh, the intro. The seemingly ever-present and often pointless intro which seems to plague death metal bands specifically. Thankfully, ‘Lanterns Of The Dead’ rips the scab off, taking its share of flesh with it, hyperspeed riff and rhythm opening our wound afresh with charred death and a slight divergence into d-beat aggro-punk to finish off this short, sharp shock. ‘Posthumous Execution’ is – if anything – more haywire, more well and truly bonkers than its predecessor, Matt Scott [vokills, bass] shrieking through a gravel-filled throat and charred esophagus, clearly a graduate with honors from the Petrozza / Connelly Vocal Academy. Wrap your earholes around 0:43-1:05 and tell me that’s not primo thrash.

Imagine NUCLEAR ASSAULT, but drenched in radioactive waste and grime, and you’ve got some faint idea of what’s happening within the title track, while ‘Earth Inferno’ brushes shoulders with doom, but only to throw it into the Gatling gun drums operated by Nadia Tydings-Lynch. A word on the guitar tone of Demir Soyer. Buzzsaw. Another word. Woodchipper. That he’s found a way to combine both into one even more destructive apparatus is impressive and not a little frightening. I can think of a good many black metal bands that’d kill for this sound.

‘Tortures In Time’ drags us kicking and screaming back into the autopsy chamber, 1,000 scalpels come to life and flaying us to ribbons as we cavort in orgiastic, blood-soaked glee in preparation for our ‘Eternal Samhain’. Give Mortuary Cult to your friend in the white high top Reeboks and his girlfriend’s jeans with his strategically patched “battle vest” who thinks TOXIC HOLOCAUST and MUNICIPAL WASTE matter. Either they’ll come over to the dark side, or you didn’t need them in your life anyway.
Review By: Lord Randall

GOETIA
Mortuary Cult
Carbonized Records