The “ouroboros” is a symbol present in many ancient cultures, it represents a snake (or a dragon, depending on the case) in the act of biting – or swallowing – its own tail, thus forming an apparently endless circular image, at first seen as immobile, but in reality in constant movement. The image was used to represent universal energy that is continually consumed and renewed, or infinity, immortality, the eternal alternation of life and death. A theme, that of death, which has always been recurring in the imagination of Goat, the mysterious Swedish collective which from its inception to today has managed to maintain the strictest confidentiality regarding the names and faces (strictly covered by masks) of the musicians who are part of it . It is no coincidence that two years after an album entitled “Oh Death!”, the track that opens the sixth album is “One More Death”, a departure based on riff with a Seventies imprint, a place where Led Zeppelin, Funkadelic, Tinariwen and Mdou Moctar magically meet, hard-rock portrayed as an oasis among the dunes of the Sahara.
“Goat” does not bring any particular stylistic innovations, but confirms a solid sound, which has its roots in world music and psychedelia. Grooves and afro-funk, guitars and wah-wahenergy and hypnosis, ancestral visions and ethnic references, but also some pleasant lateral deviations, such as the hip-hop pace of “Zombie”, the desert blues of “All Is One”, the jazz hints of the instrumental “Fool's Journey” ( with those flutes that are recently so fashionable), the freak vibe Californian Doorsian (watch out for the keyboards that characterize the second half) “Frisco Beaver”.
The hyper-rhythmic, and at times sonic, triumph of “Ourboros” closes the new pagan sabbat of the Goats, a tribal ceremony which also succeeds on this occasion in its intent to transfer folkloristic traditions from – more or less imaginative – remote worlds into the contemporary world .
10/20/2024
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
