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Rating: "Afrosvedesi".
The name might sound like a metal band lacking creativity but with obvious satanic pretensions; considering the Scandinavian geographic origin and the unpronounceable native village name (Korpilombolo, for the record), it would be hard to think otherwise. And yet, Goat defecates on metal. What Goat plays is explained, for once perfectly, by the title of this first album.
Before you recoil in horror, let me stop you right there: of purely ethnic, or worse, second-hand third-world junk, there isn’t a single note in here. No Blues from Mali, Indonesian Gamelan, Benin polyrhythms, traditional Japanese music, Indian Ragas, etc., etc... but everything just mentioned, mixed in a boiling cauldron only formally “rock”.
These guys came out of nowhere, they know very well how to attract attention in the 2000s, where everything and its opposite has been played/remastered/rediscovered: they bring up a improbable story linking Korpilombolo to Afro-Caribbean Voodoo cults, even squeezing in a crusader revenge against the local heretic population. Stuff that not even my 4-year-old daughter would buy.
But in the end, it is precisely the main characteristic of Voodoo, namely its syncretism, that reconnected African shamanic ritualism with the Christianity of the Conquistadors, and defines their music without the possibility of error. Music in itself of devastating simplicity, but with an immediately and dangerously addictive power. Imagine a perfect crossover between African, Indian, and Middle Eastern rhythms, psychedelic guitars soaked in garage and Hendrix, a female voice possessed by a soulful funk timbre, and you'll have the rough recipe.
Lethal grooves and ass-shakin' like we haven't heard in a while ("Goatman", "Disco Fever" with a 60's organ à la Question Mark & The Mysterians, "Let It Bleed" beautifully with its lazy yet groovy pace), almost hard rock assaults, but played by Balinese stationed in Baghdad ("Run To Your Mama" and "Golden Dawn"), ritual folk not well geolocalizable ("Goatlord") up to the bacchanal in honor of mother Africa of "Det Som Aldrig Förändras".
An album that will make you move both your ass and your brain, and quite possibly the album of the year for me.
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