And behold, thirty years after its creation and more than twenty years after its last demo “Heretic Mountain God” released in 2000, the Black Metal band Goat Prayers releases its debut album “Awake in the Mystic Landscape”, reminding everyone that the album “The Final Acclamation” from 2010 is actually a compilation containing the demos “Abyssic Warriors of Dragon” from 1998 and the aforementioned “Heretic Mountain God”. But this long wait was worth every second because what we have in “Awake in the Mystic Landscape” is a true journey back in time to the glorious days of underground Black Metal of the 90s and everyone who lived that time will totally understand what I mean at the moment. in which they put this album to play. For those who already know Goat Prayers, expect a direct continuation of that sound that the band performed at the time of their last demos, maybe just with an extra dose of musical refinement coming from time and consequent knowledge added to the instruments. For all those who have never heard the horde, what we have here is the best in Brazilian Melodic Black Metal with an emphasis on the melodic side but without losing the aggressiveness that the term Black Metal demands. The extremely organic production managed to make the different instruments sound very well defined and clear but still managing to maintain a bit of that dirty sound so characteristic of Brazilian releases in the 90s underground; I especially highlight the sound of the drums which is sensational. One thing that really caught my attention in “Awake in the Mystic Landscape” is the immense richness of arrangements and different tempos that you will find in all songs with fast and mid-tempo passages, acoustic fingerings, beautiful soundscapes built on the keyboards. and several different sound textures coming from those same keyboards. All this variety is very well thought out and well integrated in the course of the compositions, something that makes the music that the band performs very dynamic, making the instrumental itself “tell you a story”. Another interesting point is how the band manages to take several simple musical elements and combine it, generating a very complex result in the end. Listen to the first track “Ancestor Throne part I” and you will witness it in its fullness with its acoustic beginning and its later evolution with the melodic guitar lines intertwining, the harsh vocals very well fitted in the metric of the song, the mid tempo of the drums and then the entrance of the blast beats and the tremolo guitars , returning in the second half of the song to the mid tempo and the acoustic lull with the whispered vocals forming a perfect cycle of emotions. The second part of this composition “Ancestor Throne part II” comes in sequence and brings the best guitar lines from the entire album bringing a hint of folk in its melodies reminding me somehow of the first albums of the band Thyrfing, this track still has a extremely beautiful ending with a very well placed piano melody. “Bring Down The Celestial Lairs” starts extremely fast and furious but then slows down to a more epic tempo and takes you on a true roller coaster of emotions, “Southern Pagan Souls”, the most cadenced of the six tracks with its acoustic beginning and its finale with moments that border on Progressive and that in my personal opinion is the best track of all the ones on this album. “Abyssic Warriors of Dragon” that brings all that old school energy and that had already been recorded in the 1996 “Medieval Sculpture in Holocaustfields” demo and which was also the name of the aforementioned 1998 demo. Finally, the last song is the instrumental “The Lost” that has an extra dose of melancholy in its melodies and works very well as a closing track for this superb album. I really liked “Awake in the Mystic Landscape” but I believe that the band has a lot of old tracks that deserved to be reworked and that could be on this album but who knows these tracks will appear on a second release? And may it not take so long for the successor to this work of art to see the light of full moon..
An excellent album that “Hammer of Damnation” brings us and that will surely please the old fans of the band and gather a lot of new followers for Goat Prayers. As recommended as breathing…
