Skin, white-haired, unwashed, old and weathered enough to sag and dangle despite the tautness of the stricture glows hotly red and purple-veined as it swells in suffocating horror under the weight of the noose. Skull, screaming and flailing as it cries out without air; His only view through dying eyes is the Vatican sky that’d hold the ancient lie of the supposed creator and lackey alike. Limbs, disobedient and flailing at the sputtering and soon-to-bleed neck under the scythe of the leaden rope. From the first to the very last, all pontifex maximus must swing alight with the terror of a thousand sheep turned to goats at the sight of the pious, choked of power and bulging within robes of their execution.When this abominant crown is finally crushed and the legion Satyr revealed in death only then will the orgy of destruction that mankind thirsts so deeply for be in their own hands; Burn the auld usurpers of cultures long looted and scoured, use their robes as kindling for the toppling of every last cathedral and spire. The sound of stained-glass windows bursting through the air as great breaths of the dragon spewing incinerated faith is our call to end all religion and begin the great ‘Copulation of Cloven Hooves’. Slicked between these tightly packed trotters of ungulate desire is the blood, bone, and hope of mercilessly trampled believers. Seattle area blackened death/thrash hellions Slutvomit channel the duality of Eros, primordial progeny of the Gods of war and erotic love, through the permanently erect mayhem of the Satyr in their angular storm of rawest-ripping, skull-choking rapidity on this their second full-length album born from the most defiant 80’s innovations and their amplification by way of early 90’s extremism.

There is nothing tender about the hyper-violent sleaze injection that Slutvomit hath brought to the chopping block with their hell-tuned ‘satanic slut metal’ since 2006 but it’d be remiss to suggest that their unpure act had truly brought riffs worthy of worship until 2013. The release of ‘Swarming Darkness’ was all potential and only slightly above average attack without enough attention paid to sound design and an almost too ‘modern’ black/thrash snarl. Sure, it wasn’t exactly ‘blackened Municipal Waste’ (Ravencult?) but either way it’d felt more fun than dangerous at the time. In the six years since it is clear le Slutvomit quartet have taken their time in crafting an album that best represents their cumulative vision of witching thrash metal taken to its most logical extremes. The beguiling battery of Gospel of the Horns, the insistent Satanic ruckus of Nifelheim, and the impetuous depth charges of Sarcófago are but a few names in the grand pantheon that’d etch their way into Slutvomit‘s precariously raw and vile second record. ‘Copulation of Cloven Hooves’ is a conjuration of vengeance through the echoing swarm of the most evil 80’s thrashers and their extreme and murderous early 90’s generational amplification. From Australia, Scandinavia, and South America each violent primordial black/thrash metal hotbed is well represented and accounted for in the halls of Pope-strangling butchery that Slutvomit have built.

No doubt 2019 is considerably lighter on notable blackened thrash variations compared to 2018 and the thinness of the air allows this already somewhat anomalous Washington state crew to appear as a blood moon this late in a year where their modus is somewhat under-served. This’d end up being the biggest point of rumination on my part as there was no doubt that ‘Copulation of Cloven Hooves’ is a solid black/thrash record with some fantastic late 80’s death metal guitar work along the way but I wasn’t entirely sure it’d clicked with me simply because I’ve been starved for ‘old school’ riffs between dry albums from Ketzer and Urn in recent memory. The deciding vote was probably cast with the crazed Destruction by way of Mortem rip of “Evil Commands You” where the energy of the piece caught me with a fork in the toaster. In fact the whole of Side B is exactly that brutally percussive and really shows how some serious re-envisioning towards the oldest traditions of extreme metal can push a green band beyond their initial par. All of that said, Slutvomit are still a machine gun of a band and only those obsessed with evil forces, viper-struck riffs and volcanic beatings will get any mileage out of this impressive feat. Moderately high recommendation. For preview purposes I’d suggest “Endless Graves” has all the pentagram afire with its 1986-sourced fury and “Evil Commands You” was that breaking point that had me coming back for more abuse.

<strong>Help Support Grizzly Butts’ goals with a donation:</strong>

Please consider donating directly to site costs and project funding using PayPal.

$1.00