Goat

With an unfettered sound influenced by everything from Afrobeat and heavy metal to Anatolian funk and biker rock, Goat are an experimental psychedelic rock band based out of Gothenburg, Sweden. They have received acclaim for their explosive, energetic performances (during which they don elaborate masks and costumes) as well as their albums, including their aptly named 2012 debut World Music, which gathered styles from around the globe in a swirling mix of sound. Records that followed saw the band taking a free-flowing maximalist, anything-goes approach to psychedelia that could be lushly acoustic (2016's Requiem), blown-out and danceable (2022's Oh Death), meditative (2023's Medicine), or show off hip-hop influences (2024's Goat). Not much is known about the mysterious masked band, though an apocryphal back-story claims they are just one of many incarnations over the last 30 years of a group from a small, voodoo-worshiping northern town named Korpilombolo. Goat's sound is a fusion of world music influences, as they create a timelessly psychedelic style that doesn't feel anchored to any single time or place. In 2012, the band released its first album, World Music, on Rocket Records, followed quickly by a live album, Live Ballroom Ritual, the following year. Teaming up with Sub Pop, the Swedish psych outfit returned with the exploratory and Motorik Commune in the fall of 2014. After releasing the singles "It's Time for Fun" and "I Sing in Silence" in late 2015 and early 2016, the mysterious group returned in September of 2016 with its third record, the more acoustic and subdued Requiem. Fuzzed in Europe, a collection of live recordings, appeared in 2017, and the band's soundtrack to the horror film Double Date was released for Record Store Day in 2018. Also that year, the band released the single "Let It Burn," written for the short film Killing Gävle. That single, plus many others from their career, were collected on 2021's Headsoup. Also included were two tracks recorded in 2020 that showed a funkier, more loose-limbed approach to psychedelic music. The band continued down this road on 2022's Oh Death, an album released by Rocket Recordings that also nodded to the earthy world psych of earlier albums while also folding in scuzzy biker rock, free jazz, and spiky post-punk. Soon afterward, the group issued a remix EP featuring tinkerings by Sonic Boom and others, along with a new track, "Seu Sangue." They next undertook crafting the music for the 2023 BBC television show The Gallows Pole, relying on a selection of previously released songs and newly recorded material. Still on a creative high, the band released Medicine in late 2023, dialing back the unhinged energy of the previous album in favor of a comparatively subdued approach that relied less on African influences and danceable rhythms and more on laid-back Swedish folk and flute solos. The group continued to explore new sonic territory on 2024's Goat, bringing in hip-hop breakbeats, cop show-chase scene funk, and even more gnarly guitar solos than before. ~ Gregory Heaney & Tim Sendra, Rovi