Golem - Eternity: The Weeping Horizons (1996)

I admit I have a soft spot for awful digital photography covers from that late 90s/00s era, and Golem's debut is a prime example. Superimpose some topless, 80s-haired bombshells over a skyscape, inverted as if they were guarding the gates to some Middle-Earth city, and then slam your pretty cool logo right in the middle. This was one of the first Invasion Records releases my friend and I bought from a small import record store in Seabrook, NH, and one that we were pretty surprised with when we put it on the sample CD player. That cheesy, memorable artwork has literally nothing to do with the actual sound, and it would have been received better with a great old school death metal cover, which it later was when combined with the second album in a re-issued collection in 2014.

But I digress...Eternity: The Weeping Horizons is very much Carcass-influenced melodic death metal, like a blend of Necroticism and Heartwork, only not as quite as clinical as the former, nor meaty and amazing as the latter. I even here a few grooves present that bring to mind Symphonies of Sickness, only this is much cleaner in tone and nowhere near as grotesque. The lyrics aren't medical texts, and cover more esoteric or personal topics, but the vocal exchange between a rasp and guttural is also derivative of the evolving British goregrind gods. Fortunately, the Germans are all over the place here, with a lot of excellent writing and melodies, helping to balance out that morbid body end with the chunkier riffs that feel like you're about to be exposed to the innards of some cows and pigs as part of an anti-meat campaign. The first few tracks on here, like "Throne of Confinements" or "Mental Force" are really great, with lots of shifting tempos and memorable guitars.

The production is a bit dry, reminding me of Necroticism, and all the atmosphere here has to emerge from the guitars themselves, but it's rather well-mixed for its day, and the guys have no end to the amount of riffing ideas they can produce from that Carcass palette, nor do they ever lose steam, because there aren't really any duds among the nine tracks and 43 minutes. A couple of riffs here or there also remind one of Pestilence circa Consuming Impulse and Testimony of the Ancients, with perhaps a helping of Chuck Schuldiner, and there's certainly nothing wrong with any of that. A very easy one to recommend to fans of that 90s Carcass material, especially if you felt there was never enough of it, the guitars are the stars of the show but everything else falls in check.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

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