The Ouroborus - that is, the icon of the snake or dragon eating its own tail - appears to some a statement of the brutality of nature. To others of a Gnostic disposition it symbolises the duality of the divine and earthly in mankind. But most commonly, it’s taken simply to mean the endless cycles of death and rebirth that characterise life on this planet. As such, it’s an image that looms large in the world of Goat, the ever-mysterious and endlessly revivifying collective whose latest album marks another adventure above and beyond this particular plane of reality. This may be a band that has named albums both Requiem and Oh Death, yet this eponymous salvo proves yet again that transcendence and metamorphosis are their watchwords. Goat sees this ever-unpredictable outfit summoning rhythmically-driven rituals in unmistakable, uplifting and scintillating style, equally adept at igniting dancefloors and expanding minds. ‘One More Death’ and ‘Goatbrain’ are spectacular curtain-raisers, embodying a hedonistic spirit driven by incisive funk and possessed by merciless fuzz/wah-drenched guitar. Yet elsewhere, the band’s love of hip hop is the fuel for the end-credits-epic album closer ‘Ourobourus’ which marries infectious chant to breathless Lalo Schifrin-style breakbeat action. And which also means ultimately, like the titular oldest allegorical symbol in alchemy, we’re right back where we started. As Brad Dourif’s character Hazel Moates intones in the 1979 movie Wiseblood, “Where you come from is gone; where you thought you were going weren’t never there. And where you are ain’t no good unless you can get away from it”; in Goat’s eternal now of renewal and revelation, there’s never been a more potent means of escape.
