Formed in Brighton in 2012, King Goat are a doom band with a difference, bringing influences in from multiple different sources, and to my ears sound far more like Black Widow than Black Sabbath! They released two EPs in 2013 and 2014 before self-releasing this album, which brought them to the attention of Aural Music who promptly signed them for the second, and then also reissued the debut along with three bonus numbers from the latter EP to take the album to eight songs and a total running time of 68 minutes. Here is a band that are refusing to conform to what anyone feels they should be performing if they are doom, but instead have brought in plenty of early Seventies and progressive influences to create something that is quite special.
It is hard to imagine that this was originally self-released as the production and arrangements are superb, even bringing in a tolling bell when the time is right, as well as spoken words. The original album didn’t have a song shorter than seven minutes long, and one of the bonus songs comes in at nearly 13, but it all feels right. Unlike some bands who feel they need to stretch songs out, all of these make perfect musical sense and I can’t see how they could have been any shorter – they are exactly the length they need to be.
Doom is one of the sub genres where there are few stand out bands, and many that just want to slow it down and play funereal riffs as they are incapable of anything else. King Goat are very different to all that, shifting the music to suit their needs, and with signing with Aural I can see them soon being recognised as one of the leaders of the field. This is an incredibly powerful debut and look forward to the next album, due in 2018.
