Goathemy
Torn

December 2008
Released: 2008, Violent Journey Records
Rating: 3.0/5
Reviewer: Luxi Lahtinen

Goathemy sounds like a name of some black metal band, doesn´t it? Well, we are not that far from the whole truth here either. It´s Goathemy´s male vocalist Hannu basically who leans Goathemy´s 2nd album, titled TORN, in black metal´s direction quite a bit. Some short background info about Goathemy: the band was formed in 2002 and their debut album (FROSTLAND) saw the light of the full moon in 2006, which introduced Goathemy more as a melodic black metal band to the whole world. From there, the band has traveled quite a long way towards the more doomy paths of the forests musically, as their 2nd effort TORN, proves it pretty well.



On TORN - which actually could best be described as a blackish doom metal (doomy black metal - you pick the words in the correct order!) album, in which Sabbath-type of heavy and sorrowful riffs, acoustic interludes and passages, Teija´s siren-type of clean and fragile vocal parts, all create quite a dreamscape-ish atmosphere until Hannu comes in and breaks the harmony with his cursing, blackish shrieks. The whole built atmosphere on TORN is like a never-ending battle between good and evil, in which there are no winners or losers. In terms of trying to create something unique and a bit of out the ordinary, I think Goathemy have accomplished a great part of that for this album, which naturally is a good thing for them. Making doom - and black metal to match each other, isn´t for everybody - and Goathemy get decent marks for themselves with their attempts to make their best out of both genres. My only complaint, however is, that there´s a bit too much female vocals on the album - while however, adding overall even more certain atmosphere over this album, it still becomes a bit too dominating element in a long run. Nothing against Teija´s vocalism - just a pure observation made by my incorruptible ears.



TORN is a relatively well-made, worth checking out doom-ish black metal record from Goathemy all in all. By all means check it out if it falls into the aforementioned metal genres that you like also.