King Goat - Conduit
All five tracks on the debut LP from Brighton based psychedelic-doom outfit King Goat surpass the seven and a half minute mark, instantly branding this a progressive-metal album dynamically, and the ethereal album art confirms this aesthetic. Progressive metal in the last fifteen years has reached pretty remarkable heights looking at releases by bands such as Mastodon, Tool and the Mars Volta, and although King Goat owe their style more to doom/psychedelic metal it still delves into the progressive genre; a mightily ambitious arena in which to operate successfully.
Tonally and lyrically, Trim’s vocals propel us straight into the land of progressive rock, with a low tenor/baritone style akin to Dio or Geoff Tate, rather amusingly sounding exactly like Bane from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ in the middle of the opening track Flight of the Deviants as he announces ‘purity will be our salvation!’ - which could be mistaken for an actual sample from the movie. The vocals are reminiscent of Candlemess via Serj Tanken from SOAD’s soaring operatic yelps. One of the strengths of this album is the front man’s impressive vocal flexibility.
However, there’s enough cheap/badly fashioned leather and awkward poses and facial expressions in the press pack for people to instantly recoil before even listening to Conduit; press photos with devastatingly high cringe-levels that would make an Ed Miliband sex-tape seem cooler than Jimi Hendrix live at Woodstock. One bloke in the press shot actually seems as if he’s trying to impersonate a memorial statue of Lord Admiral Nelson.
However, like our mothers taught us, never judge a progressive-doom metal band by their ill-advised photo-shoots. As our mums would say, “It’s all about the music maaaan, hit me with some fucking riffs bro!” The title track Conduit seems to offer the most dynamic musical experimentation, with a double-time section picking up the track after an angelic and anthemic vocal passage supported by female backing vocals. For a band with two guitar players you expect more riffs and dazzling guitar parts from this album, yet not one memorable guitar riff seems to stick out, although there are a couple of decent solos on Sanguine Path. The guitar tone sounds remarkably flat for two players, in comparison to bands with one guitar player like The Melvins or High on Fire. Consequentially, the music is largely unremarkable and unimaginative with a distinct lack of dynamics and versatility.
It comes across as yet another bloated Prog-Doom release, with overly-long tracks that culminate in a lack of creativity or flexibility. The tracks bare such a stark similarity that it makes it strenuous even to conduct a track by track analysis, as it all seems to blend into a mid-tempo-epic-doom-metal arrangement with guitar lines and lyrical content you’ve heard thousands of times before. The only salvation being that the production is rather wholesome and has good clarity for a debut release; however the music just isn’t overly memorable or stimulating.