The Belgium duo, GOAT TORMENT, are back after a six-year hiatus from their previous album release, "Sermons to Death", with their latest scathing full-length, "Forked Tongues". Whilst the blackened death metal genre is saturated with a multitude of vicious and visceral bands, it must be said that GOAT TORMENT deliver one hell of a seething release in their recent opus. Brutal, hellish, pulverising blackened death filth excretes in nine-tracks of unrelenting, scathingly insidious measure, ensuring that you experience near-on forty-five minutes of unadulterated filth. With levels of brutality that have you in a vice-like grip right from the get-go, you're in for one hell of a rabid blackened death metal ride.

The mephitic vapours of "Pantheon of Devourment" exude in a black-hearted, bass heavy, blast beat bombardment, consumed by demoniacal vocals that spew, amongst a nod to religious rhetoric and chants that frankly hold no place in such a depraved space. All down-tuned and demonic, "Disorder and Disruption" bludgeons with malevolent body-blow blast beats once more, rotting you from the inside out with its mesh of ungodly riffs and sinister vocals. It's this level of sheer malignance that strikes throughout the album, especially moving into the pulverising pestilence of "Cursed", a contortion of incessant cacophony that somehow soothes the soul.

Thus far, GOAT TORMENT have provided a consistent, if at times monotone, delivery of the sonic definition of malice. The title-track is no different, although there are some more melodic moments to the cut that momentarily lift "Forked Tongues" to feeling like you're in the pits of hell with the Devil himself. Add an unnerving instrumental in the form of "The Road to Oblivion", which beckons towards something a little more stagnant, and you have a mid-section that knocks you off kilter, quietening your soul for a little respite, ready for the convulsions of "Profanation". The contrasting relentless assault of this track is magnificent, with GOAT TORMENT returning to their gnarly roots once more, serving up the same aural battery in "Deceitful Faith", cleverly intertwining dogmatic narrative and religious pontification in this smouldering beast.

Wrapping up "Forked Tongues", GOAT TORMENT ensure that we feast on nothing less than a berserk banquet of blasts in "Ravenous Ghouls". Force-fed violent vocals, washed down with some dive bomb guitar action and offering nothing short of tormented intoxication, this penultimate cut oozes malignance. The same depraved tone reeks in "Charnel Houses", a cut that will dismember you in entirety with its relentless brute force of blast bombardment and insidiously warped high-energy. Intense doesn't even come close to the experience "Forked Tongues" offers. Whilst the riffs and track structure sporadically offer little variation, this is nonetheless an album that simultaneously suffocates and penetrates, tearing you limb from limb and ripping your soul in two with its persistent nastiness and snarling antagonising afflictions. GOAT TORMENT have a voracious appetite... for souls.