First Ghost pops up last year and reinvents the 60’s and 70’s prog-rock with an evil slant not quite up to Coven standards, but much better than the contingency of the straight-forward metal bands of today. In short, Ghost became a hipster’s damp dream to lay claim to a metal lifestyle from the safety of the sidelines; it’s sort of like being a scouted football player, then faking an injury so as not to actually get into the game. Then, as if you could set your watch by it, the masses jump on the bandwagon and form bands copying or flat-out stealing the ideas from the forerunners; the ground is littered with these commoners, people, trust me. The plain truth is that nothing is sacred anymore, especially not our musical movements. This is just the beginning with this sub-genre, mark my words. It’ll be in the malls before you know it.

So here comes Year of the Goat from Sweden that offers its EP titled Lucem Ferre. I venture into this terrain very lightly as I force myself to feel a pretense draining from the band’s name. Well, suffice it to say that long before the crap bands begin single-filing into this area we can safely ascertain that Ghost and Year of the Goat are the top two long before it will become fashionable.

Lucem Ferre is a terrific piece of music that changes pace and design so evenly and magically that it’s hard to pinpoint the sound. To the chagrin and vomiting of many a metal fan, the bands and influences I hear all over this EP are sporadic bursts of Electric Light Orchestra, Ghost, a very clean-tone and tame Axl Rose vocal (if he actually stopped screeching like a bat caught in a bike spoke), Opeth ala Morningrise, and a host of otherwise unknown prog bands from the 70’s. The music here is intoxicating enough to erase any notions of shtick or my aforementioned pretense. The lyrical content is of low and evil order and is very well-crafted in the sobriety of such a malevolent style, but the music truly uplifts and I can’t help but feel strangely befuddled as to what I should be experiencing, but I know I like it. The beauty of the harmonizing during “Of Darkness” never undermines the bleak picture painted through the syntax, and that makes the songs all the more engaging as a whole. While not quite Denny Doherty, Cass Elliot and John Philips, the harmonies are nevertheless terrific. 

When “Vermillion Clouds” hangs overhead like a somber and serene entity I feel that the band might well surpass Ghost in sheer tenacity and heaviness. Granted, I’m sure Ghost’s initial scope didn’t include setting new marks for metal (or at least it’s not the impression I gathered), but the metal masses jumped on the album, and deservedly so. That said I feel strongly enough about these four songs here to claim that Ghost may have started the ball rolling, but Year of the Goat took it to their playing field. The guitar work is often straight out of the Status Quo psychedelic book and the production puts the beauty of the bass right in your face where it overpowers nothing, yet makes its presence known like a specter from a not-so-distant death that simply won’t recede. The vocals are much better than Ghost’s simply due to the fact that these are more emotional and less perpetuated by the tone of the music; the vocals here follow the music to a perfect “T”, and that almost always makes the singer more credible and at ease with him or herself.

What you get in 20-minutes is a standard of psychedelic music singed at the edges with heavy metal brilliance that will most likely be looked upon as a classic when the cretins and phonies start popping up all over the spectrum…you can almost hear them setting up their Moogs and Gibson SG’s as I type this. Accept no substitute and seek out that which wreaks not one bit of plasticity. It won’t be long before the party is crashed. 
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*Comments:

1.  Of Darkness
2.  Vermillion Clouds
3.  Dark Lord
4.  Lucem Ferre

Total playing time:  21:24

Release Date: May 11, 2011
Label: Van Records

Year of the Goat - Lucem Ferrre EP

Reviewer: Chris

April 18, 2011