Meth and Goats

Attack from Meth and Goats Mountain (2005)

Jordan Rogowski

I really don't think any four guys could have picked a more odd combination for a band name than Meth and Goats. On the one hand you've got a highly addictive, highly damaging stimulant, on the other, a boring farm animal. So where does that leave one to assume the sound of the music? That's just the point, you can't assume the sound of a band like this from their name, album art, or lyrics. Which is probably just the way they want it.

Meth and Goats possess that restrained sort of energy that often makes music so interesting. It's just something you can feel, like a pot that's slowly boiling, and you're just patiently waiting for it to go over. Bombastic and discordant, the riffing and the vocals are equally on edge, provoking a heightened necessity to tend to detail as these twelve songs are listened to. Drawing as much from bands like Transistor Transistor as anything, each song is full of a multitude of twists and turns no matter the tempo or duration. They seemingly like to operate on a more subdued pace, but it's one that's primed to explode in a ball of fire and intensity at any possible moment. The jagged rhythms and irregular time signatures really do the band some good, in that each song starts out on a fresh basis, different from the last, not knowing what's to come.

That also may be the biggest downfall of the album.

With seemingly so much going on, it's hard to really pick anything that stands out above the pack. "Wolf Style"'s laidback delivery is still one where it feels the instrumentation is bursting at the seams, but that never comes to fruition as with tracks like "Circle K," where the relatively slow pace at the beginning of the song is incredibly deceptive, as the explosive ending comes out of virtually nowhere. Singer Jon Burns is capable of a lot, and the swagger evident in his inflection is used to the fullest. Ironically enough, the songs that I find myself enjoying the most are some instrumentals that don't necessarily represent the band like the rest of the tracks do. "How Does He Get to the Sun?" provides some haunting instrumentation that leads extremely well into the much more chaotic "Psychic Car Crashes."

Fans of Transistor Transistor and old Blood Brothers records will be wanting to seek this album out in record stores. Despite the lack of any real standouts, the mix of discordance and attitude is one that serves the band well.