Review: Goya ‘In The Dawn Of November’
As a band that I’d never heard much of until now, the gentle drum accompanied by this huge, unparalleled rumbling bass sound that slaps you harder than a wet kipper around the chops, did much to put an instant smile on my face and I was hooked into the new album from Arizona’s desert doom kings Goya.
The trio, led by vocalist and guitarist Jeffrey Owens, have returned with their fourth album, In The Dawn Of November and it has further widened my knowledge about bands in this fuzz driven genre. They create one hell of a racket with levels of expertise that far exceeds others in their field. The album’s title track kicks everything off with a bass line from CJ Shotlis that could start earthquakes in the Sonoran Desert, and thunderous, consistently crushing drums from Marcus Bryant.
Cemetary Blues comes out swinging from the off, with low and slow sounding riffs that will resonate with any fans of psychedelic doom. My reaction when listening to these songs is how heavy this would sound live. I can only imagine venues having their foundations shaken across the globe, as the riff laden songs are enormously heavy and allows the vocal performance to flow effortlessly across the top of the composition. It’s a sweeping song that I didn’t want to end, but I knew that something equally colossal would be up next.
Enter Depressive Episode. The guitars wail, the drums hit, the bass is slapped, and the track skips along, pushing aside all pretenders to their crown. The gauntlet has been thrown down as this is a song of epic proportions and the standard to which Goya will now be set against. It’s fearsome, it explodes on impact and crushes from start to finish, and they follow it up with another belter called Sick Of Your Shit.
Newly signed to Albuquerque’s Blues Funeral Recordings, label founder Jadd Shickler said that it’s an album of ‘crushing cosmic sludge’ and they are spreading ‘their monolithic riff-heaviness farther than ever before’. This is evident on I Wanna Be Dead as you are greeted by a whistling wind and heavy gong introduction.
The fuzzed-out guitar sound comes to life slowly as they begin another fearsome sounding track of occult doom. It has a scary, eerie bleakness that somehow feels uplifting over the course of its monstrous twelve minutes. Alongside the chilling and, in parts, disturbing vocals, you feel that you are being taken on a guided tour of Dante’s Inferno, before being unceremoniously dumped onto a dark, sinister hell like wasteland.
If you needed any further reminders of their sinister grooves, then it comes in the fashion of their final slab of spookiness Comes With The Fall. They somehow manage to immerse you deeper in their world, with distressing soundscapes that will have you transfixed as they are emotionally moving whilst simultaneously being evocative and dramatic. It fades into obscurity leaving you wanting more but the next opus will have to wait whilst we all recover from what we’ve just received.
Label: Blues Funeral Recordings
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Matthew Williams
