Goat

I regularly listen to the free CDs that come with Classic Rock magazine. It normally doesn't take me long, as I find myself changing tracks after a minute or so; there's a lot of new bands out there, and they mostly make records that sound like ones by the old bands that I already own. One thing I'm noticing is that the interesting stuff tends to be tucked away at the end, so you only get to it after you've waded through rubbish like Black Motorcycle Bourbon and Albatroth. Last month's CD had a song called Words by the Swedish band Goat tucked away in the cheap seats. It's wonderful, it sounds like Jefferson Airplane soundchecking with Venom's In League with Satan.

I've since downloaded their albums from eMusic and I'm hooked. The Guardian describes their music as "weaving together rock, Afrobeat, funk, chants and tribal drums into an intoxicating, psychedelic stew", but then The Guardian would. Actually, it's a fair description, though it makes them sound a bit dry and earnest. Which they're not, as you can probably guess from the picture above. I reckon they  look like what you imagine Slipknot would if they came from Brighton. 

The new album Commune is full of catchy riffs, chanted singing and time signatures that Frank Zappa probably had on his To Do list. Some of the songs have lyrics that could fit on a King Size Rizla, which may make sense as it's probably what they were written down on in the first place. The album is 38 minutes long and fairly flies by: Talk to God and Words kick things off in style, and To Travel the Path Unknown slows things down nicely Planet Caravan-style. There's a slight mid-album lull, before the wonderful Hide from the Sun gives the album its second wind and carries us to the end. It's great fun.