DIXIE GOAT ~ ORDER, CHAOS, LIFE AND DEATH ... review

 

There was a part of Desert Psychlist that was worried, when Chile's Dixie Goat released their live retrospective "A Decade Of The Goat" last year (2022), that this was the  first signs of the band wrapping things up and riding into the sunset. Thankfully with the release of their new album "Order, Chaos, Life and Death" those fears have been allayed and we can rest easy that the band, Nikk (vocals/guitars); KF (bass) and Pipe (drums), are going to be about for a few years more. The new album is as strong. if not stronger, as anything they have released to date so far, which is another bonus.

Wind effects and a tolling bell introduce opening track "Se7en" followed by a low slow and heavy guitar and bass refrain driven by pounding percussion, it's all very Sabbathian up to this point but then in come Nikk's gritty vocal and suddenly the song takes on a whole different hue, still dank and dark but a touch more blues orientated. The Sabbathian elements of the opening track are partially discarded for next track "Lucky Break" and see the band jamming an upbeat heavy rock groove that boasts an easy to sing along to vocal melody, the band only returning to the proto-doom arena in the songs last quarter when Pipe and KF lock in on a thundering slow and heavy rhythmic groove which Nikk furnishes with some tasty dank and bluesy lead work. "Born To Be Dead" finds Dixie Goat going down a more traditional doomic path, a moody and atmospheric tome sporting appropriately downbeat and melancholic lyrical content delivered in measured and mournful tones. If we have one complaint regarding this album it would be that next track "Woman In Black" would of been better served appearing a little lower in the track listing, it is a great song but its vocal meter is so similar in places to it s predecessor that it sometimes feels as though you are listening to the same song. Up next is "He Waits For No One" and this song sees Nikk adding a little distorted gnarliness to his vocal attack, nothing harsh just a touch grittier and growly, the groove surrounding those vocals also boasting a grittier, growlier dynamic as well as some nicely off-kilter dissonance. There is an element of grunginess to next song "The Girl, The Rope And The Serpent" that Desert Psychlist is not sure we have heard Dixie Goat explore before, a slurred element to the guitar tones that had us recalling Alice In Chains, it is an element we really hope they explore further on subsequent releases. Second to last number "Dee Dee" is out and out rocker played hard fast and loud, a properly enjoyable foot to the floor stomper. Final number "Don't Say It's Name" is a chugging loud/quiet/loud opus packed to the gills with all the tropes and cliches we love and cherish in music of this nature, slow reverberating chord patterns, low growling bass lines and deliberately pounding percussion can all be found here along with a vocal that is suitably grave and solemn, its doomic perfection.

Dixie Giant have become somewhat the poster boys of the Chilean underground scene and rightly so, they are a band whose music is of a quality equal to that of any of their Northern Hemisphere counterparts. "Order, Chaos, Life and Death" is testament to why that is so, it is an amalgamation of hard rock, metal and doom that may have its origins in South America but is global in its appeal. 

Check it out ... 

© 2023 Frazer Jones