Goat

Goat craft their experimental psychedelic rock from a Gothenburg base in Sweden, pulling in sonic threads that stretch across Afrobeat, heavy metal, Anatolian funk, and biker rock. The group has earned praise both for the high-voltage intensity of its live shows—where members appear in elaborate masks and costumes—and for a series of studio albums that began with the aptly titled 2012 debut World Music, a swirling global fusion issued on Rocket Records. Later releases embraced a freewheeling maximalist ethos in which psychedelia could turn lushly acoustic, as on 2016’s Requiem, or erupt in blown-out dancefloor energy, as heard on 2022’s Oh Death; the same restless spirit produced the meditative sound of 2023’s Medicine and the hip-hop inflections of 2024’s Goat.

Little concrete information exists about the enigmatic masked collective, although an unverified origin story suggests the musicians represent merely the latest incarnation of an ensemble that has existed for three decades in the remote northern Swedish town of Korpilombolo, a place known for voodoo practices. Their music merges worldwide traditions into a psychedelic idiom that resists placement in any particular era or locale. After World Music arrived in 2012, the band issued the live set Live Ballroom Ritual the following year. A partnership with Sub Pop yielded the exploratory, Motorik-driven Commune in autumn 2014. The singles “It’s Time for Fun” and “I Sing in Silence” preceded the more restrained, acoustic-leaning third album Requiem in September 2016. The 2017 live collection Fuzzed in Europe followed, and the soundtrack to the horror film Double Date appeared for Record Store Day in 2018; that same year the band contributed the original track “Let It Burn” to the short film Killing Gävle. Headsoup, released in 2021, gathered numerous singles alongside two 2020 recordings that signaled a funkier, looser approach to psychedelia. Rocket Recordings put out Oh Death the next year, an album that revisited the earthy world-psych textures of earlier work while incorporating scuzzy biker rock, free jazz, and angular post-punk. A subsequent remix EP included reworkings by Sonic Boom and others plus the new piece “Seu Sangue.” The group next supplied music for the 2023 BBC series The Gallows Pole, blending previously released material with fresh recordings. Medicine, issued later that year, tempered the preceding album’s chaotic drive in favor of a calmer palette rooted more in Swedish folk and flute lines than in African rhythms or propulsive beats. On 2024’s Goat the band pushed further into uncharted territory, folding in hip-hop breakbeats, cop-show chase-scene funk, and even fiercer guitar solos.