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Year Of The Goat: Angels' necropolis
12/02/13 || gk
Occult rock. This has probably been one of the most abused terms in heavy metal in the last couple of years. While Coven and Black Widow might have defined the sound in the late 60’s and early 70’s with genuinely disturbing lyrical content and unpredictable delivery, lately it seems to have come to mean simply classic 70’s hard rock mixed with some pseudo satanic lyrics and lots of goat imagery with some really dull and flat vocals being optional.
Latest to get on this ever growing bandwagon is Sweden’s Year of the Goat. Now these guys really like Blue Oyster Cult. They have a few other influences too but B.O.C. seem to be the most obvious, particularly in the vocal style of Thomas Eriksson and in the guitar playing which matches the tone and style of Buck Dharma. The album opens with “For the king” which is typically bland for the genre and it’s where the first B.O.C. comparison turns up. It’s a largely inoffensive song though. Title song “Angels’ necropolis” is lengthy and doesn’t manage to hold attention although there is some pretty cool lead guitar playing here. “Spirits of fire” so closely sounds like 70’s B.O.C. that it’s just strange. They’re not directly plagiarizing anything from the band but damn this is a good effort at sounding just like them. And so the album goes on. 70’s hard rock is milked for everything its worth and the “occult” lyrics keep on coming.
Musically, this band is pretty good. The guitarists (all 3 of them) can certainly play, the vocalist is comparatively good and the rhythm section is competent. The problem lies in the song writing. If you’ve never heard any hard rock from the 70’s and have no idea who or what Blue Oyster Cult, Rainbow, Thin Lizzy and Wishbone Ash are then you might be wowed by this music. Otherwise this has all been done before and honestly there’s nothing occult about this; just the same old goat imagery with some snakes and dragons thrown in.
Every time I played this for the purpose of reviewing I really wanted to turn it off and play Blue Oyster Cult’s “Secret treaties” instead. If you’re a fan of this whole occult rock fad then you’ll probably find something to like here but I would humbly suggest you check out “Secret treaties” instead. Also, for some real occult rock, go here.
- Information
- Released: 2012
- Label: Van Records
- Website: Year of the Goat Facebook
- Band
- Thomas Eriksson: vocals, guitar
- Per Brodesson: guitars
- Don Palmroos: guitars
- Tobias Resch: bass
- Fredrik Hellerstrom: drums
- Pope: keys, percussion
- Tracklist
- 01. For the King
- 02. Angels’ Necropolis
- 03. Spirits of Fire
- 04. A Circle of Serpents
- 05. Voice of a Dragon
- 06. This Will Be Mine
- 07. I’ll Die for You
- 08. Thin Lines of Broken Hopes
