EHP 0.34: Meth And Goats attack from meth & goats mountain CD/LP [ order cd ] [ order lp ] Pressing Information: 1000 CDs 100 pink 200 green/yellow split 200 green/white splatter In a sea of shitty and overpackaged demo CDrs and lame as hell press kits complete with glossy promo shots, you can always find that diamond in the rough worth salvaging. For me that diamond was the midwest's Meth And Goats. I was already familiar with Meth And Goats from their split seven inch with Ten Grand, but haven't heard much from them since. After listening to some of their home recorded tracks on repeat all day I had to wonder why. After subsequent conversations with them about a possible release I knew I had to be involved with their debut full length. Meth And Goats prove that punk rock doesn't have to be overproduced and glossy on "Attack From Meth And Goats Mountain". They rip through 42 minutes worth of post-hardcore dirt-rock comparable to bands like Transistor Transistor, At The Drive In, and The Blood Brothers, but with an originality all of its own. Meth And Goats marry an art damaged punk sound with an absurd amount of spaced out jams, numbing feedback, and distorted screams that reeks of beer and body odor. Raw, rough around the edges, and catchy as sin. TRACK LISTING: 1. How Does He Get To The Moon? 2. Rat Tail Revolution 3. Art Corpse 4. Tell Me I'm Powerful 5. Gods Got Money 6. Circle K 7. Comedy K 8. How Does He Get To The Sun? 9. Psychic Car Crashes 10. Wolf Style 11. Wonderful World Of Fingernails 12. Moon Reprise REVIEWS: Standed in Stereo (Jose Fritz) Their self-titled release coincided incidentally with the impact of The Sounds first CD. So I find both on my desk at once. I’ve been hearing about The Sounds for months and am completely disappointed by them. It comes off as completely flaccid. It’s a non-event. Each song just tells me they are venting, and are unhappy writing dance-pop for Karen. Meth and Goats completely crushes this pathetic LP. Early 80s punk faced a musical landscape utterly sodden with the fully evolved cruisy brute that disco had become. They were all appropriately angry, bands like The Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Minor Threat, Circle Jerks pushed the limits of coarse, fast and unadorned songwriting. The punk scene had two polarized epicenters, one to the east in Washington D.C and one to the west in San Francisco. It’s been thirty years or so and it is easy to forget that there were in fact in punk bands in that era from the Midwest. But the victors write history as Churchill said; and such it is written. I have heard a number of 1970s Midwest Punk bands: the Time Flys, The Tombs, Pegboy to name a few, and there was an almost no-wave sensibility to these bands. Maybe it was the home-cooking, maybe it’s that old time relijun, maybe it was the corn-fed diet, or maybe it was ergot in the wheat... but it was different and some of it was damn good. Meth and Goats boils down the best parts of these bands into a fine yellowish powder and then smoke it with a little mint and some cloves. Meth and Goats are resilient like Transistor Transistor and old Blood Brothers records sharing that Bombastic and discordant, bloodline, but decidedly raw in their own way. Perhaps it’s something rural about them. Hailing from Moline I see them surrounded by goat farmers stockpiling smurfed pseudoephedrine, red phosphorous, and hydrochloric acid to make their own crank. Like a high quality batch of Christy, Meth and Goats are flammable, corrosive, and potentially explosive. Their songs abrade each other like different grits of sand paper. But the consistently good lyrics and vocal approach pulls it all together with surprising intelligence. In the anthem "Gods got money" they lay it all out: "You cant say your life was / planned out long before the time / when we all knew that you had lost your faith / & in time you’ll find that / your existence / was just a joke and / there’s no one up there to laugh... this is how you pray upon the noose of faith" It’s more than a few generations evolved from even the most eloquent of Ramones singles. They maneuver away from post-punk, screamo, and emo-core themes in every way. Meth and Goats is the second coming of nowave. Discordant riff follows discordant riff seducing you like Monoshock on a good day. It could be said they have something in common with Alice Donut other than obscurity... and that would be legend. Punk Planet issue 72 (SJ) Meth and Goats go for the throat and take no prisoners. Brandishing a red hot fire iron emblazoned with a unique style of heavy math rock (meth rock?) this band is out to scar you and bore into your skull. The drums crush, the guitars crush . . . the whole thing crushes. The only part that crushed too much was the nine minute instrumental repetition of "Moon Reprise" which is still blasting away in my head. Indiana Journal Review (Wade Coggeshall) Meth and Goats is a collection of wastrels who play foul post-punk using garage sale technology and unstructured attitudes. But it’s important to note just how talented each member of this foursome is at his respective instrument. Drummer Ray Malone is most impressive, holding nothing back. Like a Juilliard grad who got mixed up in the wrong crowd. He sports several production credits on “Attack from Meth and Goats Mountain,” which may help explain why he’s given so much space to pummel. The rest of the band, including guitarist Dennis Hockaday and bassist Talbot Borders, more than holds its own. We’re talking sinewy and strident. Impressive skill covered in grit and grime. Vocalist Jon Burns, in turn, alternates between screaming and offering his psychosis in a bullying fashion. Opener “How Does He Get To the Moon?” is a prime example of Meth and Goats’ untoward structuring. Malone and Hockaday start with off-kilter and hazy power before breaking out coherent, nimble noise and then leveling off between the two extremes. It’s the same near freeform in other places. The clawing guitar lines mixing with Malone’s jazzy, surfing drum skittishness on “Rat Tail Revolution.” The repeating avalanches on “Tell Me I’m Powerful” that end with jazzy breaks of all things. By the time you get to the handclaps embedded in the overwhelming slop rock of “God’s Got Money,” it’s someone’s idea of subversive humor. Clamor Magazine (Jordan Rogowski) What do you get when you combine the bombast of the Blood Brothers with the off kilter, frantic instrumentation of Transistor Transistor? Forty minutes of wonderfully chaotic and cacophonous music, that's what. Meth And Goats have a lot to offer, and they do so combining a myriad of tempos, chord progressions, and vocal inflections that just leave your head spinning. Instantly, a listener will remark at just how loud the album is, without being too overbearingly powerful. The fuzz-laden guitars have a real ebb and flow to them that helps each song move under the howling screams of singer Joe Burns. Burns' style is a hard one to describe accurately, as it changes so much from song to song. Varying between an almost spoken style and an all out shriek, he's able to make every word drip with an intensity that's simply remarkable. Meth And Goats do know how to scale back, though, as the eighth track on Attack From Meth And Goats Mountain so surely displays. The instrumental "How Does He Get to The Sun?" offers minimal, but haunting instrumentation that lulls the listener into a false sense of security, before "Psychic Car Crashes" rips them directly out. After a few extremely strong tracks follow that up, the eight minute instrumental closer, "Moon Reprise" ends the album in devastating fashion. Not sounding far off from Isis, the droning, pounding metal is so meticulous, and so rhythmic that you can't help but me entranced. There's a ton to like on this effort from Meth And Goats, all they'll need is your time. Punk News dot org (Anchors) 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. Indie Workshop (Jake Haselman) Screw the coasts right in the ear. For years we’ve had every publication imaginable telling us which new hot act from the coast (either coast, take your pick) we should be paying attention to. And if it’s not one of the coasts, it’s friggin’ Canada. All the while the Midwest has consistently churned out great band after great band. Like no other scene, the Midwest has cultivated an atmosphere of experimentation and forward thinking when it comes to the indie rock sound. Touch and Go and Southern have certainly helped push this to the public, but now that it’s not ‘95 anymore people seem to think that the heyday is over… of course those people are wrong. Meth & Goats have been bringing the rock to the Midwest for years now. Based out of the Quad Cities, these four guys have bended genre stereotypes and blown minds in basements, VFW halls, or any variety of rented space for upwards of five or six years. Taking cues from fellow Midwesterners Ten Grand, Meth & Goats make driving rock and roll than takes equally from the early days of aggressive indie rock (Rodan, June of ’44) as much as it does from like-minded bands from today. Attack From Meth & Goat Mountain is forty-some-minutes of all that is right with post-hardcore scene. Guitars are mangled to produce unnatural sounds, the bass plods along with devastating rhythmic accuracy, and the drums act as the glue that keep the whole thing from spilling out onto the floor in a chaotic mess of blood, hair, and broken strings. The spirit of Jesus Lizard is married to the spirit of Ten Grand, and the results will not only have you grinning from ear to ear but also have you reaching for the volume knob to make sure the shit is cranked. Their debut album is the sound of a basement show where your couch is set on fire and two different lamps are broken against the wall. You’ll also notice that all your beer has been consumed and someone is passed out in the bathroom. Then later you’ll find one of your roommates dangerously perched on the roof and another missing completely… yeah, Meth & Goats just played your house. My Ghetto (Andrew TSKS) I have to mention Meth and Goats, and their album "Attack From Meth and Goats Mountain". The album is on Electric Human Project, and it's good to see a band who have been laboring away in obscurity for over half a decade finally get some recognition from higher profile labels. Their album has a bit of a different feel than their live performance that I reviewed a few weeks ago did; rather than primarily reminding me of 80s indie rock as it did live, on record their music is most evocative of the strange, dark, chaotic hardcore that was coming out of southern California in the early 90s. In fact, the bands who were most interesting in those days almost always ended up being the ones who recorded for southern California labels, but were coming from relative isolation, such as Cupertino, CA's Mohinder or Boulder, CO's Angel Hair. Meth and Goats aren't similar to either of those bands in sound, but they definitely have that similar dark, chaotic vibe, as well as emerging from complete isolation with a sound unlike that of any of their contemporaries. If they remind me of anyone on record, it's the early VSS, the band that came after Angel Hair and moved away from hardcore, simultaneously incorporating far more influence from both math-rock and goth spheres. I don't think there's anything directly goth about Meth and Goats, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that the members are familiar with Joy Division or Bauhaus. They create more of a groove in their music than either of those bands, owing primarily to the masterful drumming of Ray Malone, as well as the way guitarist Dennis Hockaday and bassist Talbot Borders interact with the rhythms Ray lays down. Meth and Goats often invert the standard structure of a rock band, with Dennis's guitar hewing most closely to the rhythm of the song through repeated chords and staccato strumming. Talbot's sinuous bass lines weave their way around and through what Dennis is playing, taking more liberties with rhythm structure and interjecting both melody and funk groove into the songs. Underneath all of this, Ray is mostly left free to improvise, following his instincts like a jazz drummer and in many places on the album getting as far away from the standard beat as he can go before reeling it all back in. Meth and Goats's music is interesting to listen to from a technical standpoint for these reasons, but it wouldn't be worth anything if it didn't keep things exciting. Fortunately, it does this quite well, especially on songs like "Tell Me I'm Powerful", which features steadily increasing tension until a point midsong when the entire band hits chords, then chokes them off for seconds at a time. The effect is that of several false endings in a row, which pulls the rug right out from under the listener before going into a completely different riff that takes the whole song in a new direction, eventually culminating in a transition to "God's Got Money" that sounds less like a change in songs and more like a midsong pause. They're messing with us, but in fine fashion. An even better indication of this fact is that 5/4 time signatures sound perfectly normal here, while "Psychic Car Crashes," the entirety of which is in 4/4, sounds woozy and fucked up, as if it's constantly adding and dropping beats. It all rocks, but it's a strange kind of rock. Sometimes that's what's needed, though. Zero Magazine (Andy Smyth) Alright, now I have seen just about everything. We have gotten to the point in the music scene where bands will name themselves just about anything. Nothing surprises me anymore, but still when I see an odd original name it does draw my attention. Meth and Goats. It made me wonder. I wanted to hear them because they are on the same label as El Buzzard. They have the same oddities swirling around their music. Their sound is similar to many garage / 90’s noise acts such as Sonic Youth, and today’s acts such as The Blood Brothers and At the Drive in. They prove that music doesn’t always have to be overproduced or super smooth. Rough, Dirty punk is often welcomed amongst the overpopulated scene. The time signatures are off just enough to keep you on your toes. It is definitely a unique listen, and you have to be a fan of the off kilter noise rock genre. The band didn’t blow me away, but with my A.D.D. music listening habits, I will find a way to keep them in my mix.