Labels: self released
Review by: Alex Deller
Naming yourself for an AmRep-era Melvins song when you play noise-rock seems a tad too on the nose, but Night Goat manage to win out while lobbing you a bit of a curveball. Rather than yawnsome hand-me-down sludge, the band beat you about the head with caustic, fuzz-blasted stuff in the vein of KARP, Tile, Cherubs circa ‘Heroin Man’ or Helmet if they found themselves really fucked up on acid. Things barrel forth with an ugly, punked-up intensity, full of bile-swilling snarls n’ sneers and riffs that sound capable of punching holes in sheet metal. There’s still some finessing to be done and every once in a while you might get a whiff of something rather familiar, but as debuts go this is memorably nasty and potent enough that it’ll leave you with a crippling two-day hangover.