Velorum – Hollow Moon
There must’ve been something more that the alternative rock bands promised that set them apart from their contemporaries. There must’ve been a moment where it felt like the alt-rock groups were going to open up music to a host of new possibilities.
After all, frankly, the dumb heavy metal bands with teased hair and the old blues-rockers with no hair didn’t sound that dramatically different. All worked with a kind of sound that could be delivered from a big stage through large PAs. Then what set those bands apart?
The promise of growth, development, and of finding a way to cut through the endless, meaningless noise coming out of the radio. Bands like Velorum don’t just make an impressive, muscular rock sound. Their music feels like the culmination of years spent living and studying.
On the one hand, yes, Velorum’s “Hollow Moon” has enough of a punch and familiar sound to make it an easy addition to alt-rock playlists featuring some of the genre’s by-now classics. On the other hand, however, what makes this band’s music special is that it feels like the work of people who’ve accepted that they needed to progress and grow. In a world where a successful 70-year-old rock star is judged by their ability to be as unchanged as their 20-year-old version as possible, this is quite refreshing to hear.
Goat Farm – Fatale Femme
As far as record labels, film studios, or publishing companies are concerned, there’s a fixed list of topics that can be approached. Fail to use any of those, and you won’t even be considered. Fail to rehash some old idea, it seems, and your new idea might not even see the light of day.
The real question, however, I think, is whether the people who are, essentially, running culture for us, truly believe that there is only a limited amount of topics that can exist in songs, movies or books. Or, are they, indeed, just trying to protect us from ourselves?
Those unanswerable questions are precisely the reason why it’s a fine time to rejoice whenever something challenges those perceptions. Bands like Goat Farm may be a bundle of nasty fun, but that’s mainly because the group would find it hard to get approval from those whose job is to take conventional ideas and spread them out to the world.
Led by Geezer Butler-style bass riffs and creepy guitar chords, Goat Farm fantasises about the deception and ritualistic murder of a romantic love partner on “Fatale Femme.” The song truly gets out of the group by the time that the singer issues a Courtney Love-like scream that is supposed to soundtrack the gruesome pain of the victim. More diverse-sounding and clever than typical modern metal, Goat Farm has some evil ideas that don’t adhere to convention.
