Goatsnake
Flower Of Disease

THE REVIEW

There are albums and albums, and if you're on DeBaser, you already know this. There are genres and genres of music, and you probably know this too. What you might not know (but if you're in this review, chances are you do) is the stoner of Goatsnake.

Paraphrasing a well-known DeBaser human case, what is stoner? Take a good handful of healthy rock, whether hard or not, a spoonful of blues, a bit of rage and plenty of weariness of living, mix well and... throw it all away. Stoner is not defined, it is lived.
And in particular, the stoner of Goatsnake. They are sweat-drenched faces in a sweltering and dusty summer of effort, relentless workers of nothing.

This "Flower of Disease" accomplishes one of the most difficult tasks of all: it completely empties the listener's mind. Stahl's voice (aided by some well-placed delays) is nothing short of hypnotic, compelling, painting in refined warbles everything we've lived through, while also maintaining a constant mocking tone.
Because Goatsnake is built that way, they hit you in the face with a monolithic riff that kidnaps you and takes you away towards increasingly distant vortices of abstraction, ever further away... and without realizing it, this album has entered under your skin, a chiseled and subtle enchanter, with its oxymoronic title.

Perhaps darker than the previous album, "I", "Flower Of Disease", represents, in my humble opinion, the highest point reached by Goatsnake. The doom component is in fact more emphasized, and there are not few references to Black Sabbath (harmonica above all). Our guys have managed (once again, I would add) a perfect work of stylistic cohesion that leaves the listener stunned, who truly has nothing left but the desert in their mind.

Wasting further words is useless, after all, it's all stuff you already know. And that you have already lived. You just don't know it yet.

Watering this flower of disease...