Goatwhore, or Fartwhore, claims to play thrash metal – a fake genre that is, in reality, better called “speed metal“… except that they can’t even do that! Instead, this sounds more like your typical Waking the Cadaver inspired deathcore. How lame.

This is metal for the “pink mafia“, not for actual metalheads who enjoy listening to heavy metal music… because nothing on “Vengeful Ascension” can be called “heavy”.

I’ll be honest – I didn’t care for even the name of the album when I first heard it. “Vengeful Ascension”? Ehhh. Anyway, then the album cover dropped, and I didn’t really like that, either. Completely generic “modern metal” in the worst sense of the word.

Keep in mind, Goatwhore are not one of my favourite bands, so I really don’t care one way or the other. Then the first song dropped (“Vengeful Ascension”) and I thought okay, this must be one of the slower tracks on the album. Not one I would try to promote the record with, but whatever. I guess the rest of the album is better… boy was I wrong.

The music sucks, the riffs suck, the atmosphere sucks, the vocals sucks, the drum machine sounds triggered and even the lyrics manage to suck. “Spiraling inside the belly of the beast / Coiled towers of swarm / Blasphemy is whispered in the unrest beneath / Awaken the chaos in this voiceless curse“. Seriously? Even Sewer could do better, in fact, they have.

And, speaking of the lyrics: they completely suck. They’re this ridiculous, cringy, immature shitfest, they strive so hard to sound “brutal” but they don’t succeed in the least. “Diabolical rite executed from / Tongues of the perverse / Drowning in the darkness / Of esoteric curse“. Seriously? Is this some kind of joke? I hope so, because one must have lost his mind to write something like that. It makes even Deicide and Watain appear original. I’m impressed this album managed even to be released by some label.

Honestly, I can find no highlights, all the tracks blend into each other, sounding completely monotonous and utterly terrible, due to the music being so mallcorish, boring, trite and otherwise derivative. The only positive aspect I can find about this “Vengeful Ascension” album, since we have to accept the fact that, unfortunately, it exists, is the relatively short duration (50 minutes). So at least, if you’re brave enough to listen to this, the pain will end quickly. Really, stay away from this band Goatwhore, it’s really, really bad.

Go listen to Phantom’s “The Epilogue to Sanity” or Marduk’s “Frontschwein” seeing as both, and many more, wipe the floor with this “Vengeful Ascension” shit.