In a time when bands are falling into predictability or desperately clinging on to past morning glories, GOAT remains an outlier. Hell, even their deviation isn’t standard (hello, statisticians). Their latest, self-titled album doesn’t so much announce itself, as it does spiral enigmatically into existence—like some ancient mantra reverberating from a cave deep in the earth. With Goat, the Swedish collective summons the hypnotic spirit that first drew us into their ritualistic grooves over a decade ago, but they’ve also come tooled up with an even more impressive sack of sonic delights.
Lead single ‘Ouroboros ‘— the ancient symbol of the serpent devouring its own tail— happens to be the final track on the album, but aptly it set the stage for what feels like an album that embraces the cyclical. Life, death, rebirth, and everything messy and mysterious in between is up for grabs here. This isn’t an album bound by morbid or mundane introspection. Instead, GOAT makes universal cycles feel like the ultimate cosmic dance party, luring you into transcendence through rhythm, sweat, and sheer funking groove.
The album kicks off with a one-two punch in the form of ‘One More Death’ and ‘Goatbrain,’ tracks that immediately hurl you into a haze of skull-penetrating, fuzz-laden guitar licks and primal, funk-driven rhythms. It’s GOAT at their hedonistic best, with merciless wah-drenched sounds threatening to incinerate everything in their path. If you’ve had the joy of seeing them live, you know the kind of energy we’re talking about – something that makes even the most stoic of souls kick off their brogues, wrap their ties around their head and lose themselves in wild abandon.
But just when you think you’ve settled into a familiar GOAT rhythm, there’s a curveball. Enter ‘Fool’s Journey’ — a blissful, introspective detour into meditative terrain that draws as much from free jazz and shamanic tradition as it does from their concurrent project, Djinn. Here, GOAT proves that they can just as easily send your mind drifting into some distant cherry blossom-lined mountain tracks, with dewy mists hanging from ancient forests.
‘Dollar Bill’ majors on Goat’s improv skills, taking us down through level after level of heightened psychedelic hypnosis, dragging with it a groove so thick it feels like it’s been dredged up from the underbelly of a 70s funk club. Bass and drums lock together in series of changing rhythms while the guitar tears through the mix with a dirty, unpolished snarl. And just left of centre, there’s the teasing splash and rattle of tambourine. It’s gritty, it’s raw, but it never loses its sense of direction.
If ‘Frisco Beaver’ sounds familiar, it should — it’s a playful reference to ‘Disco Fever’ from World Music (2012), but with a much more refined, insistent sharpness to its delivery. Calls to “Do what you need!” lead us craftily into busy percussion and persistent guitar lines, drawing you into the melting core of the track through their repetition until you’re lost somewhere between the past and present. There’s a sense of joyous nostalgia here, but GOAT doesn’t let you stay in that comfort zone for long.
What’s perhaps new, and most surprising is how seamlessly they weave in their love for hip-hop into tracks like ‘Zombie’ and the epic album closer ‘Ouroboros’, which pulse with a head-nodding intensity, fusing breakbeat rhythms with GOAT’s unmistakable psychedelic flair. ‘Ouroboros’ in particular, is full on and feels like a culmination of everything that came before—a spiraling, ecstatic chant with screaming saxophone and distorted flutes that stretches the boundaries of what this band can do, only to remind you, by the end, that you’re right back where you started. The circle completes itself, but there’s always more to experience.
Where Medicine leaned into folk and The Gallows Pole (from the Shane Meadows TV series) delved into dark, cinematic atmospherics, the varied offering on Goat is a reminder that this band never really lingers in one space for too long. They may embody the mystery and chaos of life itself, but beneath it all is an undeniable rhythm, a primal force that ties all these wild experiments together. This is a band that knows how to make music that calls to something ancient and elemental within us all, but they also know how to throw a damn good party while doing it.
There’s an old quote from the 1979 movie Wiseblood that the band refers to in the press release, and it rings especially true for GOAT’s music. The main character, a war veteran, Hazel Motes, completely disillusioned and alienated from a world that offers him no meaning says: “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.” However, in GOAT’s world, where time loops back on itself, where “God is in every part of you”, and existence is a just series of rhythmic rituals, the only place that matters is the now. Goat feels like the perfect soundtrack to that eternal, mind-bending, infinite present.
Refusing to be pinned down, this is a band that constantly dances along the edge of the void, inviting listeners to step just a little closer. Don’t just listen to Goat. Get yourself lost in it. Go on.
