I first heard of
Goat The Head when they featured on some Metal Mag’s covermount CD. I thought they sounded pretty damned good and set about tracking down their album
Simian Supremacy or, to give it its full title -
Simian Supremacy By Means Of Primal Caveman Death Metal. As luck would have it, a copy had just arrived at Metal Reviews so I claimed that one straight away. First impression – Heavy; a good, solid Death Metal album. Then I went and found out more about the band; I should have left well alone and stayed away from
You Tube. Okay, I could take in the cavemen in the tree on the album cover as an artistic impression of the album title but, to run around dragging their knuckles dressed in animal hide and mud just spelt ‘GIMMICK’ to me. Then I got to thinking of other bands who play ‘Dress-up’ to play their music and thought “Why not!”, their music is Old School Death Metal so why not fit their image to their music, ie back to its roots; simple and organic. The Death Metal style played by
Goat The Heard is no frills, no bells and whistles just honest to badness heavy ‘n’ crunchy Death Metal. Okay, I’ll be first to admit that there’s no tick in the box for Originality but there is a certain raw brutality there that makes you want to pick up your Air Guitar and head-bang around the room. What’s more, perhaps because of the less than stellar production, I got the impression that they’d managed to capture some of their live show atmosphere in the album.
Hailing from Trondheim, Norway’s breeding ground for Metal bands,
Goat The Head are Per Spjøtvold (also in
Atrox) on vocals and Neanderthal grunts; Ketil Sæther: guitars (ex
Lumsk); Snorre A. Hovdal: bass (also in
Third Kind) and Kenneth Kapstad on drums (a busy man who also plays in
Animal Alpha and
Monolithic. Seeing that each band member is ex this or also that band makes me think that
Goat The Head started life as a side project that grew beyond expectations and took on a life of its own. Not being familiar with their other bands and unable to find out very much about them I have a sneaky suspicion that
Goat The Head will now be their main concerns rather than their ‘Bit-On-The-Side’
The album starts off in quite a novel way with an intro that sounds like a bunch of Cavemen stumbling across a load of musical instruments and trying to figure out what they do. Obviously they are quick learners and rip your face off with
Terminal Lesson; a bajillion beats a minute shredfest just to get your juices started. The rest of the album is unlike most other Death Metal records where you will find, for want of a better description, a musical theme throughout the album; where each song has a certain similarity running through them.
Simian Supremacy doesn’t seem to have that; each song seems more of a stand alone entity rather than an interrelated part of a cohesive unit. Whether this is a good or bad thing is solely a listeners’ preference; me, I like it as I am getting variety. To those of you who prefer a musical theme running through the tracks, yes, you will find it all a bit disjointed but stick with it and don’t try to make any sense of it – It’s not thinking person’s music! It’s kinda like filling up your six disk auto-changer CD player with all sorts of Death Metal and pressing ‘Random Play’. If the thought of doing that fills you with terror, revulsion and abhorrence, then perhaps
Simian Supremacy probably isn’t for you. (But you really should loosen up some!)
Goat The Head probably take their music seriously but you can’t get away from the fact that this is a FUN album. I mean with track names like
Beast Man, Bone Throne and
Rockbiting Havoc how can you take it serious? The guitars are extremely technical in places with flashes of brilliance throughout the album and the drumming would blast your underwear into the middle of next week if you stood too close; but the bottom line is
Simian Supremacy is fun, entertaining and extremely enjoyable. Give them a listen at their
My Space page, see what you think. I’ve no doubt that seeing them in all their glory live would be the best way to appreciate their music, however, I’ve also no doubt that I’d be malleted by some fucking numpty with a plastic club which would tend to piss me off just a tad. So if you wanna see them live and really enjoy the show, best get a helmet.
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