Somewhere in their travels, every metal fan has had their
attention distracted by the four nicely-presented breastages of Butcher Babies’
frontwomen Heidi Shepherd and Carla Harvey-Coates. The question on the mind of many, though,
was: Are these girls musically legit or
are they just Playboy models with microphones?
That question gets answered quite emphatically in the
first few seconds of the Butcher Babies’ latest album, Goliath. Shepherd and Harvey-Coates waste no time in
delivering guttural growls, blood-curdling screams, and angry roars that would
make Phil Anselmo proud.
But not all of the attention should be on the female
members of the band or their vocals. The
music is amazingly brutal – metalcore at its finest.
And don’t expect any reprieve as you listen to the album
start-to-finish. The music is
consistently relentless from track 1 through track 11.
Highlights include the opening opus, “I Smell A Massacre,”
which sets the stage nicely for the aural onslaught that follows; “Grim Sleeper,”
which demonstrates that Shepherd and Harvey-Coates can sing in well-orchestrated
(can’t say “pretty” in the context of this raging madness) harmonies; and the
shuffle-beat heaviness that is “Axe Wound.”
If there is one thing that Goliath is not, it’s
mainstream. While others in their genre
may throw some songs on their records that balance metal mayhem with the
occasional, radio-friendly, soaring chorus melody, Butcher Babies flips the
finger to that approach. “The Mirror
Never Lies” is perhaps the song with the most melodic chorus on the album, but that
doesn’t give enough of a pause in the assault to allow the tune to become a
crossover hit. Butcher Babies seem to
know who their audience is – a testosterone-fueled contingent who think taking
a break from an hour-long circle pit is for the weak – and they cater to that
audience with every note of this masterpiece.
In some ways, Goliath hearkens back to the early days of
Metal Blade Records, with its relatively thin-sounding production and absence
of the kind of hooks that enable one to sing a song back after hearing it only
once. However, the aggression of the
music and the animalistic vocals of Shepherd and Harvey-Coates more than make
up for any deficiencies. Butcher Babies
is definitely a band to keep an eye on…and, by “keep an eye on,” I’m talking
about more than just admiring what’s overflowing from the frontwomen’s metal-studded
corsets.
