October 28, 2024 by A.S. Van Dorston

Masked occult Swedes bust out the fuzz tones for their strongest collection yet.

I wanna visit the Goat lair. I know they have one, packed to the rafters with hippie psychedelic tapestries, lava lamps, a menagerie of exotic instruments, bookshelves full of occult literature, sci fi, anthropology and musicology texts, and masks up the wazoo. And speaking of masks, while fellow Swedes Ghost gave up ended up unmasking for the media, Goat remain, after twelve years, steadfastly masked and anonymous. That’s some impressive commitment.

A few albums into their catalog, I did start to wonder if they’d ever learn to write a tune. Their music is a craftily layered patchwork of rhythms and riffs, on which they hang their psychedelic sound design and chants, switching it up with some folky diversions. Their self-titled album number six shows, however, that they don’t need to become traditional style songwriters, as it’s their strongest, most immediate collection since their debut. Actually, it might be better than World Music (2012). Compare, for example, “Disco Fever,” with it’s sequel on the latest, “Frisco Beaver.” It’s more dynamic, varied, with improved musicianship and production. That keyboard through the second half of the song is perfect, evoking classic period Fela Kuti. Overall the album rocks harder than anything they’ve done before, with a delightfully nasty guitar fuzz throughout many of the songs, including “One More Death,” “Dollar Bill” and “Zombie” mixing in Zeppelin-sized heft with Funkadelic grime, “Goatbrain,” featuring a lick that sounds like it could have been a lost track from Maggot Brain.

“Ouroborous” enters us into a cosmic time loop. Perhaps we ought to go back to 2012 and unfuck some things up. Constraints of reality aside, Goat’s new jams are good enough to help see us through 2024 at least somewhat spiritually intact.