It’s been over a year since the last Mountain Goats record. Knowing the way Goats leader John Darnielle works, it would be fair to assume that he’s dead. Luckily, he’s not, and I’ll give you two important pieces of evidence to prove it.
• 1. He put out that Extra Lens album (TMT Review) earlier this year.
• 2. There’s a new Mountain Goats album called All Eternals Deck coming out via Merge (their first for the label) on March 29.
The big deal on this record is that John Darnielle enlisted former Morbid Angel guitarist/current Hate Eternal leader Erik Rutan to produce four of the album’s tracks. Well, it’s a big deal for Darnielle, that is. Morbid Angel and Hate Eternal probably don’t mean much to the average Mountain Goats fan, but they’re probably pumped for Darnielle, whose metal love is well documented. They might, however, be more excited about the other producers the Goats worked with: John Congleton, Brandon Eggleston, and Scott Solter.
As for the record’s sound, Darnielle described it by saying, “If you have ever watched say a 70s occult-scare movie where one of the scenes involves a few people visiting a storefront fortune teller, getting their cards read, and then trying to feel super-hopeful about their predicted outcome when what they’re visibly actually feeling is dread, then you have a pretty decent idea of what the album is all about.” The record also supposedly brings to mind Burnt Offerings, Go Ask Alice, and “that one scene in The Warriors where they’re on the train and the sun’s coming up and they’re safe but you know the scars are permanent now.” That all sounds pretty cool, but, really, you could have just said that the record has songs titled “For Charles Bronson” and “Liza Forever Minnelli” and I would have been sold.
All Eternals Deck tracklist:
01. Damn These Vampires
02. Birth of Serpents
03. Estate Sale Sign
04. Age of Kings
05. The Autopsy Garland
06. Beautiful Gas Mask
07. High Hawk Season
08. Prowl Great Cain
09. Sourdoire Valley Song
10. Outer Scorpion Squadron
11. For Charles Bronson
12. Never Quite Free
13. Liza Forever Minnelli
• Mountain Goats: http://www.mountain-goats.com
• Merge: http://www.mergerecords.com
