Originally GUTWRENCH, over the past 11 years, the band changed monikers to GOLGOTHAN (Read the story of the name, it’s just as back-of-the-bus Junior High as you’d want when it comes to humor), and tossed a couple members in the ditch along the way, releasing 3 EPs between 2014-2016, not really returning until ‘20s cerebral masterwork, the Rotting Genitalia EP.
And thus, the band that brought us ‘Drink Of My Piss’ and ‘Diddle The Genitals’ – seriously, adult humans wrote these songs – a couple years back arrives in 2022, with the backing of Czechian death devotees Lacerated Enemy Records and a full-length debut. After wading through the expected obligatory intro of ‘The Rack’, the title track wastes no time in dragging both the coffee-can drums and my attention span down into the fetid mire. A guitar tone almost as scathing as terrycloth provides a tolerable if uninteresting bed for the gremlin-voiced Jai Benoit to jibber-jabber over, and its only now, looking at the band photo, that I realize we have a group of refugees from Party City’s Halloween aisle providing this afternoon’s “entertainment”. Figured…
To be fair, ‘3 Teeth To Eat You’ ups the game considerably from what’s come before, catchy riffwork, an almost gooey mix, and decent pacing wrangling my concentration back into the dank basement. Unfortunately, ‘Parent Organism’ revives the chaos and not in a good way, and the drums are no less annoying this time, but if you hang on, there’s a rather tasty guitar solo in the last 30 seconds or so. On we move to the “sure to inspire a cease and desist letter” ‘Gravy Train’ (Now I want gravy), which doesn’t nearly live up to its delicious-sounding title, more haphazard than horrifying in execution, containing more pinch harmonics than a BLACK LABEL SOCIETY song, when I’m quite sure that wasn’t what GOLGOTHAN was going for.
I’d like to hear the band explore more of its mid-paced sound (moments of ‘Lard Is My Shepherd’), and ‘Winged Death’ rises above the excrement, foul and befouled, proving that – when GOLGOTHAN tries really, really hard – there’s some hope. The death-obsessed will likely dive in whole hog. Myself, while Leech doesn’t entirely suck, I’m still far from sold. Maybe next time.
Review By: Lord Randall
GOLGOTHAN
Leech
Lacerated Enemy Records
2.5 / 6