ALBUM REVIEW: Debt of Aeons – King Goat

Brighton’s KING GOAT are a band that are steadily on the rise to the forefront of the UK’s underground metal scene. Having garnered a stellar reputation over the past few years with their blend of epic doom with prog rock flourishes, they’ve marked themselves out with a unique style and engrossing stage show. Their second album, Debt of Aeons, sees them refine their craft even further, and cement their place as one of the most impressive acts currently active in the UK scene.

The album’s opener, Rapture, begins with a deeply atmospheric, clean sound, moving forward at a grim dirge. Thick, tar-like riffs and authoritative drumming act as a great base for the powerful vocal delivery, and it has an incredibly epic feel to it from start to finish. Gradually building momentum and intensity throughout, it eventually takes on a much darker and heavier tone. It’s a very strong way to start this record, and sets the bar high early on.

Eremite’s Rest builds on the latter song’s harsher side, and provides plenty of solid and melancholic music for the listener to sink their teeth into. The progressive influences are on display in full force, with some shoegaze inspired guitar licks being liberally peppered throughout this utterly monolithic offering, contrasting greatly with the harder, more doom metal orientated sound that marks this track. The album’s third, titular track, begins life as a fairly tame and measured affair, with crisp guitar tones and precise, rhythmic drumming backing up the soaring and angelic vocals. It swiftly begins to head in a much more palpable direction, with deep, sludgy guitar and bass parts characterising the vast majority of this particular song. It only gets more ferocious as it progresses, finally reaching much more cacophonous and aggressive heights than the song’s opening moments would suggest.

Psychasthenia, with its sparse melodies and heavily ambient sound, is a very short piece of music that serves as a palette cleanser between the two fairly monolithic track that sit on either side of it. It’s an impressive instrumental piece that breaks the album up very well. Doldrums Sentinels has some impressive, jarring guitar hooks and some incredibly robust rhythm sections. Anthony Trimming‘s excellent and varied vocal range is on full display throughout this song, from soaring, almost operatic deliveries through to equally powerful, grating lower tones. Musically, a lot of the band’s more progressive tendencies begin to surface again on this track, particularly when it comes to the guitars, which range from chunky, thick hooks through to ethereal and hypnotic cleaner passages. It’s a track that conveys an impressive emotional range, and takes the listener from grandiose highs and down to crushing, visceral lows, and is captivating from the first note to the last. The sixth, untitled track, which lasts less than a minute, has an intensely eerie atmosphere, and bridges the gap to Debt of Aeons‘ final track, On Dusty Avenues, with aplomb. This last song has a deeply funereal feel to it, and possesses some of the most haunting and eclectic vocals on the whole record. Musically, it is far closer to traditional doom metal, with beefy guitar hooks, crushing bass lines and slow, powerful drums, which combined give this song a bleak and ultimately epic sound. It’s a fantastic end to an equally fantastic record.

This is a truly superb record. KING GOAT have managed to build upon the template laid down on Conduit, trimming the fat significantly from their sound and leaving only lean, superlative, imaginative musicianship with plenty of atmospheric motifs in their wake. It’s hard to find fault with Debt of Aeons, from the music itself down to the sound and production. This is a band at their (current) creative peak, and it will interesting to see what KING GOAT have in store in the future.

Rating: 8/10

Debt of Aeons is out now via Aural Music.

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