By: Chris Ball
Goblin Cock | facebook |
Released on September 2, 2016 via Joyful Noise Recodings
After one of the shortest retirements in musical history, Rob Crow returns with yet another Goblin Cock release, following on from an album under the new monicker Rob Crow’s Gloomy Place, last year. Crow actually only retired in 2015, messily, via social media, citing health and family reasons, but you know he was/is born to do it. ‘It’ in his case being a fairly broad church, musically encompassing alt/indie/math rock, most famously as one half of Pinback, but also ostensibly doom/stoner metal with this outfit, the eccentrically named Goblin Cock. I say ostensibly because although Crow has borrowed the imagery, vocabulary and occasional Pythonesque silliness of doom metal, he’s known as Lord Phallus when in GB guise, there is a lot more going on on this record, over and above the heavy riffing. And what is going on will be familiar to fans of Crow’s work, whichever variation that may be, and there’s been lots. I have no idea as to Crow’s writing and recording processes, but it seems to me that he just makes music, and then decides later on which of his multitudinous bands and albums to assign it to, as it doesn’t seem to matter which one he chooses, it all sounds like him. I may be wrong and there really is a great plan at the start of each album to create a distinct sound, but if so, then it’s certainly quite erratic…not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.
It begins, I guess, like you would expect on ‘Something Haunted’ with a riff of bowel quaking intensity that Down and Sleep would be proud of, as Crow vocalises the riff with guttural ‘boom‘s – yep, this does sound like serious metal, but not it’s long before Crow’s keening vocals and serpentine melodies take the tune in a less gonzoid direction.
‘Montrossor’ is more urgent and no less aggressive; it piles on the math rock rhythms in between punkish verses, crushing riffs and chopping, speed metal bridges. Both these first two tracks stop so suddenly it’s like they have been abandoned, purely so Crow can start something new. Already you can see the artists personality smeared all over this music, restless, endlessly creative, Quixotic and perverse.
Thankfully not every track leaps about stylistically, like a kitten on a hot plate; the instrumental ‘Youth Pastoral’ is a driving progressive metal jam, ‘Flumed’ is casually perfect grunge rock, and the following track, ‘Bothered’ is an equally accomplished pop punk stormer, reminiscent of a heavier Weezer, with sparkling keyboard embellishments.
Lyrically it’s the usual odd fare; ‘The Undeer’ is a weird punk thrash tale about zombie deer (I think) and ‘Stewpot’s Package’ has the chorus “he’s covered in gravy, he’s covered in stains”. In general I have failed to really grasp the meanings of the songs, which may not be a great loss, as Crow makes no attempt to really sit within metal genres tropes, though that doesn’t necessarily mean they are works of great profundity. It maybe easier for novices to navigate early exposure to the Crow oeuvre when Goblin Cock do instrumentals, as on the pummelling, epic ‘The Dorse’, even if in a way these are the least reflective of the character of the artist. Rob Crow, like many eccentrics, is at his most interesting when he’s being what seems deliberately obtuse. Check out ‘Island, Island’, which starts out like hectic stoner rock before moving through progressive metal on the back of some truly vicious riffing and then lurching into a black metal breakdown, and then back into a punky vocal part before stuttering to a stop. WTF – quite frankly! It all ends, somewhat improbably, on the classy ‘Buck’, a swaggering, dead eyed groove of bottomless cool, with an industrial, goth metal undertow. It’s the sort of stadium alt-rock that plays to thousands of mascaraed teens. You are left asking the question, if it’s all so easy for Crow, then why is it so hard for him too?
Necronomidonkeykongimicon is really only a couple of killer choruses away from being a pretty great album, but seeing as it’s being released under a silly name, by an artist unlikely to follow it up any time soon, any buzz it creates will soon dissipate. Maybe he needs to ditch all the alter egos, quit playing in the shallow end of genre stereotypes, as he does with Goblin Cock, and just make Rob Crow music under the Rob Crow monicker. There are people like Devin Townsend, who I really see as a kindred spirit, who release whatever the fuck they like under their own name and the fans get it and buy into whatever he’s doing.
Anyway, if you’re not already a fan then maybe you can start your journey here into the world of Rob Crow music, as it really should be known… If your already a fan, then be assured – normal service has resumed!
