There's hardcore, post-hardcore, metalcore and nerdcore, and somewhere amongst the four lies Goblin Cock, a heavy metal band founded by Rob Crow of Pinback, who Goblin Cock sounds nothing like. And what do they sound like? Their MySpace page cites "Sabbath, feasting on orc's blood, Snuffaluffagus, and puppies" as influences, and indeed, if you crammed Black Sabbath, Dungeons & Dragons, Sesame Street and Vincent Baker in a room together, you might hear the faint strains of Goblin Cock emanating from under the door. If you know who Vincent Baker is, Goblin Cock is for you; if you don't, Wikipedia is a click away.
Didn't feel like clicking? I'll save you the effort: Goblin Cock is heavy metal for gamers, a soundtrack for every Dungeons & Dragons gaming session ever held on a Saturday night in the basement with the blacklights illuminating the Led Zepplin poster on the wall, Sabbath cranked on the stereo, little plastic polyhedra scattered on the character sheets on the card table. Charcters with names like Lord Phallus (guitar, vocals), King Sith (bass), and Loki Sinjuggler (keyboards), perhaps facing off against Bane Ass-Pounder (guitar) and Braindeath (drums). Can't quite envision that? Their latest album, Come With Me If You Want To Live (say it to yourself like Schwarzenegger did in T2), will fill in the gaps in your imagination.
Wolfmother's brought back the retro, but Goblin Cock is like Wolfmother got into a fight with GWAR on World of Warcraft, and then Lordi showed up and it was a total party wipe. You need look no further than the cover of their CD, designed by Magic: The Gathering card artist Mike Sutfin, but you should. You absolutely should.
The instrumental "Hissless" opens the album in a manner reminiscent of Cypress Hill's "Cock the Hammer," all thunder and lightning and rain and mood, quickly fading off into "Loch," thick heavy bass bubbling up from R'lyeh, Sabbath's "Iron Man" meets Metallica's "Thing That Should Not Be" halfway to armageddon, all fallen angels and dripping tentacles and Save Vs. Death Ray. "Big Up Your Willies" takes its time getting started, guitar-in-a-blender style reminiscent of Quicksand slowly churning away until the vocals arise, swallowed in drone. "We Got a Bleeder" is anything but drone, its steady bouncing guitar and pulse-racing drums sounding like a 5-man raid party heading off to loot the Wolfmother's lair. Another critter lies in wait inside "Haint," fuzzy, warm drone wreathing around the apparition at the center of the song until they are surpassed by rising voices in harmony, a sacred chant burning away the evil, sending chills down my spine. And then the second wave arrives with "Mylar," a nasty pedal-to-the-metal White Zombie El Sexorcisto revving monster.
With a name like Goblin Cock, this is obviously not a band that takes itself too seriously... unless you take things like WOW and D&D and M:TG seriously, that is. Nowhere is this epitomized better than in the final track, "Trying To Get Along With Humans," a spacey, cartoony race to the finish, like that big chase scene at the end of that one Scooby Doo cartoon when the giant robot attacks and Tranzor Z flies in to save them, somewhere between Saturday Morning cartoon and Saturday Afternoon D&D, like that one time you stayed up all night and ate too many salt and vinegar chips and hot dogs and then drank all that chocolate milk and got sick so the DM let your elf wizard kill the goblin king even though you technically lost initiative and only had one Magic Missile spell left.
Man, that was awesome.
Favorite Track: "Ode to Billy Jack"
