The Swedish psychedelic rock greats Goat have just released their new album ''Requiem''. As is usually the case, then Goat albums tend to build up a lot of expectations, and this case was no exception to the rule. The album packs the usual mixture of somewhat transcendental psychedelic rock, world music and afrobeat.
The first song on the album is titled ''Union Of Sun and Moon'' and it essentially packs some world music style female vocals on top of some African influenced rhythm patterns with a short fuzzy psych guitar bit in the middle of the song as well. Not a bad song, but also nothing spectacular as well. The second track ''I Sing In Silence'' follows the same mold, as does the third track ''Temple Rhythms'', whereas the fourth track ''Alarms'' tends to be somewhat more interesting with its sort of wild west kind of psychedelia and a pretty fine fuzzy psych solo. The next two tracks though move into the same kind of rather boring world music realm without anything particularly great to offer. The seventh track ''Goatband'' on the other hand puts forth a different proposition and reminds me what Goat are all about. Or what they were about when their awesome first album came out. The track packs some kraut infused repetitive psychedelia with an enjoyable dreamy transcendental essense. The same kind of essence comes also out on a track titled ''Goatfuzz'', which sounds a lot like Black Sabbath though, with the rest of the tracks offering some rather boring world music and African music influenced tunes.
So what can be said about ''Requim'' to sum it up. The album offers a lot of filler tracks that are pretty similar and rather boring, while the album still packs 4-5 good psych tracks. Thus I am left with mixed emotions about this album, as was really the case with ''Commune'' as well. Thus it would perhaps be good for Goat to go back to their roots and rediscover the material of their first album.
Some related links:
Bandcamp: https://goat.bandcamp.com/album/requiem
