Cokegoat - Vessel



I was looking through all the promo albums I had to still listen to, and it struck me how many of the releases either involved a band or album title with “goat” in it.  There is something about metal that is really enamored with goats.  Then it hit me.  I should do a series of reviews that have the common thread of “goat” being somewhere in the band name or album title.  Gotta do something to mix things up, right?  I can't guarantee that I'm going to love every album, so there may be some reviews where I really struggle to find something positive to say, but here we go.

Cokegoat gets us started, and this is an album I would have reviewed regardless.  This one came out quite a bit earlier this year and I haven't gotten around to writing about it until now.  So many good releases coming my way, and so many releases period.  You can add this one to the good release list.

At first listen, I thought maybe this was one of those schizo bands that couldn't quite decide what manner of metal they wanted to play.  The first track on the album, “Fear The Followers”, is kind of punky and death metal-y, so I thought this was cool, because when I picture a goat on coke that's pretty much what I thought it would sound like.  But then the next track was more doomy and sludgy, so then I was confused (it doesn't take much).  Track 3, “Dogs”, rolled out, and then I could really hear what this band was about.  For me, this is easily the stand out track of the album.  Its heavy and chock full of riffs, with some doom and greasiness thrown in for good measure, and it's also what the rest of the release sounds like.

If you like Danava and Saviours, these guys really remind me of those 2 bands.  Not that they sound exactly like them, just the general feeling that you get from listening to this album is the same as albums by those other bands.  They are not ultra heavy, but there is some heft to what they do.  There are some cool lyrics going on as well, and that always gets my attention.  At times the riffs almost veer off into stoner rock territory, but not very much.  Just enough that you notice it.

There are so many bands, and recording technology is such that a lot of things get released that maybe shouldn't see the light of day, which is too bad.  It obscures good, promising releases like this one.  Give this one a listen, there is a lot of good stuff going on here.  Unless you're one of those trve cvlt people who only listen to one man black metal bands from Saskatchewan, you'll find something in this one that you will like. 

- ODIN



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