I'll admit that when it comes to GOATESS, I had a case of judging a band by its name. Upon hearing this band name I sarcastically thought "oh great this will be a poorly produced black metal group.", not that I have anything against black metal, in fact I quite like it. However there are so many bands around that fall in to the genre and fail to do anything special. It turns out I was completely mislead by this name and GOATESS are actually a pretty fantastic stoner/doom metal group hailing from Stockholm, Sweden. So the second that the first track on "Purgatory Under New Management" started up, I was completely taken by surprise, and I absolutely loved it.

Sure the stoner and doom metal genres, like black metal and death metal, get flooded with bands that do nothing special and fail to grab any kind of attention, the best bands will sneak up on you and completely catch you unaware. GOATESS does a great job of incorporating a very 1970s psychedelic feel in to their particular brand of stoner/doom metal which sets them apart and makes them special. There isn't a weak member of the band with each of these guys perfectly playing their part. The vocals are what is to be expected from stoner metal, sounding a little like a cross between Ozzy Osbourne, and Josh Homme which is a perfect mix for this music. The others do their job well, keeping do that fuzzy and plodding doom feel with their own little drug trip style thrown in to the mix.

As I'm writing this, I'm struggling to really pick a flaw in this music. As far as I can see, the only real issues is that it's possibly not as memorable as one would like. After spending some time not listening to the album, I can often recall certain guitar melodies, but that's about as far as it gets. Rather than having an entire song stuck in my head or finding myself desperately wanting to go back and listen again, I just think "oh that was cool, but I can't entirely remember how it went". Unfortunately this is the case with a lot of bands that fall in to the stoner and doom categories. It's not really a complaint as it is truly enjoyable and well-crafted music put together on an extremely good album. It's just a shame that even with these cool psychedelic elements that it just couldn't completely stick with me.

I feel like after the last little tangent, that I need to reiterate that GOATESS have crafted an fantastic album in "Purgatory Under New Management", with great song writing, solid production, and an extremely cool and rather unique psychedelic feel that other bands attempt to do but fail. GOATESS pulls off the style perfectly. This is a great album and has definitely reminded me to never judge a band by its name.

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