Facebook [Release date 08.03.19]
Instrumental progressive rock, eh ? It’s not for everyone and typically not for the Mad Dog. However, having set aside my traditional aversion to both “prog” and “instrumentals” and opened my mind wide enough to get a really massive kick up the backside from Goya’s excellent 2017’s debut EP “Kathmandu”, I was all ears for the new “single” release from Stoke’s own thinking-man’s bludgeon-rockers.
Actually, the word bludgeon isn’t accurate as it invokes a bloody mess on the walls – this is carefully-crafted, full-frontal drama rock all centered around a decidedly non-vegan colossus of a riff. This is the first of three singles planned for this year prior to a full length album later in 2019 (with none of the aforementioned singles on it….way to drip-feed and sate your fan base, guys….so many didn’t get the memo that the old “album, tour, break for two years, then rinse and repeat” formula has been usurped and is “sooooo five minutes ago”).
Opening with a thunderous, low-slung bass line which Lemmy will feel reverberating through in his Jack-soaked veins….wherever he is now….the track picks up drums and feedback like a tornado sweeping up everything in its wake before settling into a mesmerizing, monster riff. With the weight and density of a concrete elephant, Goya has a knack for producing the sonic equivalent of a brick wall – uncompromising, solid and unmovable. Imagine the soundtrack to a car chase through a post-apocalyptic landscape – you’d have to be brain-dead not to tap your foot….or more likely take a baseball bat to your old computer in the garden….repeatedly….keeping strict in time, of course, with the crunch and bite of “Prophecie”.
As the track fades, you can hear someone (presumably a band member) ask, quite eloquently, “will that be okay?” “Will that be okay” ???? The walls in my house are perspiring and there is broken glass everywhere underfoot – “yes, that’ll be fine”.
I digress here but if you’ve seen or heard the new Whitesnake video for “Shut Up and Kiss Me”, Coverdale is not helping the broader heavy-rock genre to combat the mainstream’s repeated and ridiculous claims that rock is dead. With the fondue-cheesy lyrics, image and delivery (and frankly, the “budget for birds” has clearly been trimmed at Whitesnake HQ – Tawny Kitaen in her heyday these lasses certainly are not), the point is it looks and sounds so dated. I’m not saying get rid of the singer but listen to the streets to understand where the future of heavy and hard rock is going. Goya don’t have a throat in the band and that, for sure, don’t matter none.
If a band can consistently produce such high-energy, sticky-as-sap, riff-rock as Goya seem to do in spades, a singer is just taking up space in the van. My past proclivities tell me I shouldn’t like this band but dammit I do – I just can’t help it. ****
Review by Mark “Mad Dog” Shaw
Featured Artist: JOSH TAERK
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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024
In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections
Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024
09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
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