GOETIA – Mortuary Cult

vote
6.0

• Bands:
  GOETIA
• Duration: 00:31:38
• Available from: 12/06/2026
• Label:

• Carbonized Records

Recording debut for Goetia, a group from Washington DC, who released the album “Mortuary Cult” for the Carbonized Records label, after a handful of self-produced demos and EPs in the last three years. The trio focuses on a chaotic combination of black, thrash and death metal with also a marked crust imprint, in particular for the very rough sounds due to the distortion and screaming singing.

The band cites the legendary Morbid Angel among its main influences, which is found above all at the guitar level in some Trey Azagthoth-like melodies in the accelerations and consequent slowdowns, such as for example in the title track. The approach, however, is much more chaotic in Goetia, who in some ways go towards an assault black/death between Revenge and Angelcorpse, as in “Posthumous Execution” and in all the blast-beat outbursts, skilfully set to music by the drummer Nadia Tydings-Lynch, capable of hitting really hard on the fast tempos and also juggling the double bass drum very well.

The basic idea of ​​the album, however, is to bring together multiple styles, given that there are also black/thrash/punk influences as in the Martyrdöd-style d-beat massacre of the introductory “Lanterns Of The Dead”, while shocks of dark-tinged death/grind can be felt instead in “Earth Inferno” and “Bestial Tomb”, which focuses entirely on an alternation between brutality and more rhythmic parts.
It is possible to find reminiscences of thrash metal à la early Kreator in “Excarnation”, while in the first part of “Tortures In Time” there is an aura of groovy and British death metal à la Bolt Thrower and Benediction; the final “Eternal Samhain”, finally, prefers slower tempos in Autopsy style and then returns to black/death/thrash digressions in the second part.

Plus points: Tydings-Lynch's drumming, Demir Soyer's solos and some old Morbid Angel style riffs. Weak points: the excessive monotony of Matt Scott's screaming, the somewhat cheap cover, the sounds that are too strident and the lack of a precise identity.
This last aspect is what penalizes this work the most, because Goetia truly seem like a group without a compass on a compositional level, which draws from various styles somewhat haphazardly and without a real logical thread. A more defined vision would be enough, for example focusing more on the black/death part à la Angelcorpse, which appears to be the one in which the Washington trio manages to express themselves best.