Goya: The Art Of Darkness
American doom trio GOYA have just released their first full album in eight years and it’s certainly proven worth the wait. In The Dawn Of November sees the band at the height of their heavy, psychedelic powers, producing a record that will no doubt trouble the upper echelons of any self-respecting doom fan’s album of 2025 list come the long dark winter. As their most recent string of live US dates came to an end, we caught up with singer and guitarist Jeffrey Owens to find out what the band have been up to and what they have in store in the coming months. We started off by asking what the band had been doing since the release of 2017’s Harvester Of Bongloads.
“Yeah it’s been a while but we’ve been keeping ourselves busy,” Jeff begins. “After we finished Harvester… we did some touring in support of that album, then we put a couple of songs out on different compilations plus an acoustic EP (2021’s The Universe Wails). After that we started work on the new record. We really wanted to craft it and take our time with it though, so we spent a good three or four years writing it before we felt it was ready to go.”
If you’ve listened to In The Dawn Of November, you’ll have realised that was time well spent, as it’s an album that totally elevates GOYA to the next level. Heavy and dark but also sexy and swaggering, it’s a real highlight of the doom metal year thus far. In part, this is down to the work of legendary producer Jack Endino who is someone the band have admired for a long time. “We had our sights set on Jack for this album from the start,” confirms Jeff. “He’s done a few albums adjacent to our sound in the last 15 years or so that sound exactly how we think they should. After hours – or months, even – reading his website, I reached out to a friend who had worked with him and he put us in touch. I don’t think Jack had really heard of us before but he was certainly enthused to be working with us!”
Lyrically, the new album touches on themes of loss, grief, anger and depression . In a world that seems increasingly bleak, writing music can be a real outlet for people, although Jeff admits he doesn’t always find writing lyrics a particularly easy job. “I find writing music to be pretty therapeutic but lyrics are more of a mixed bag. Writing lyrics is the hardest thing about writing a song, for me. I’m extremely critical of myself and I always think I could do better. Once in a while, the lyrics come together with minimal effort but it’s rare. The therapeutic part with the lyrics is usually when the song finally comes together in the rehearsal space and the recording studio. Some nights on stage it has that impact on me too. But, yeah, usually the act of writing lyrics is very difficult and almost the opposite of therapeutic!”
Although it sounds absolutely massive, In The Dawn Of November has a really organic feel to it and while many doom bands will often achieve this feel by jamming ideas together in the studio and crafting the songs from those ideas, GOYA’s approach to writing is a little different from that. “Our writing process is a mixture of things,” Jeff continues. So far, almost everything is written by me, although there is some stuff on this record which is a little more collaborative. CJ [Sholtis, bass] got a riff in on this one and we’re hoping for more of that in the future. My favourite way to work is to have just a little bit of something written and then bring that into the rehearsal room to see what everyone does with it. For me, the magic is in those unexpected things that come up when people get together in a room to play music.”
GOYA has always carried the label of doom proudly and, despite it being a genre that is sometimes maligned as ‘just copying SABBATH’, it’s a flag the band waves proudly and as a genre itself it appears to be enjoying something of a renaissance at the moment.
“There’s nothing wrong with being called a doom band and we embraced it wholeheartedly on this record. ELECTRIC WIZARD are obviously a huge influence on the band. In fact, I sometimes joke that we’re basically ELECTRIC WIZARD if they were American and not quite as good! The NOLA scene also has a special place in our hearts – especially drummer Marcus Bryant’s – so it would be remiss of me not to mention ACID BATH and EYEHATEGOD as examples of bands that got us into this music in the first place. And, of course, BLACK SABBATH who have literally just played their final ever show. We all owe everything to them. I find the later era SABBATH albums (starting with Volume IV even) to be leaning more into progressive stylings which is the kind of thing that really interests me. These days, I’m pretty out of touch with the new stuff though so I can’t really say whether it’s undergoing a renaissance. It ebbs and flows. A lot of the people I knew playing this stuff ten or fifteen years ago don’t care about the genre anymore. I like a whole load of different stuff though, like RILO KILEY and OLIVIA RODRIGO. I’m not very metal really, I just like stuff where the people writing it are probably clinically depressed!”
In The Dawn Of November is out now via Blues Funeral Recordings.
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