You’d expect a Scandinavian band with that name, horned skull cover art and a love of all things occult to sound like Deirdre Barlow fisting the devil on a desecrated altar. In Dudley. But actually Year Of The Goat are more classic and restrained, equal parts Blue Öyster Cult hard melodies and 80s power metal reminiscent of Helloween, with a nod to Type O Negative.
Angel’s Necropolis comes wrapped in a highfalutin concept with YOTG claiming it to be no mere collection of songs but “a recollection of a fantastic chain of events wrenched from a state of reverie”. No. It’s a collection of songs.
Certainly they’re masters of the ethereal – A Circle Of Serpents is what Muse would sound like had they discovered Candlemass instead of Radiohead, while the title track is an 11-minute epic. All songs are written in order for “you-know-whom to unleash the ultimate force to make the unworthy, the puny and the contemptible dwindle in their shameful grief”, but as the record sags in the middle, you can’t help wonder: what if Lucifer himself deems YOTG one of those puny? Shit. It’s a gamble, boys.
