goat

The masked Swedes take us on another glorious psychedelic trip through kosmische landscapes littered with inviting influences and enticing reference points.

Make sure that you hold on real tight though because this clatter of hoof and horn relishes letting loose and tearing through fields at a discombobulating, yet ever-stimulating, rate.  'Goat' sees this ever-unpredictable outfit summoning rhythmically-driven rituals in unmistakable, uplifting and scintillating style, equally adept at ignitiing dancefloors and expanding minds. ‘One More Death’ and ‘Goatbrain’ are spectacular curtain-raisers, embodying a hedonistic spirit driven by incisive funk and possessed by merciless fuzz/wah-drenched guitar. Yet elsewhere, the band’s love of hip hop is the fuel for the end-credits-epic album closer, ‘Ourobourus’, which marries infectious chant to breathless Lalo Schifrin-style breakbeat action. And which also means, ultimately, like the titular oldest allegorical symbol in alchemy, we’re right back where we started.

As Brad Dourif’s character, Hazel Moates, intones in the 1979 movie, "Wiseblood", “Where you come from is gone; where you thought you were going weren’t never there. And where you are ain’t no good unless you can get away from it”; in Goat’s eternal now of renewal and revelation, there’s never been a more potent means of escape.