Goatshead. The former pagan name for Gateshead. A town on the southern bank of the river Tyne.
Composed of Adam Stone (Poundland), Mike Vest (Drunk In Hell, Bong, collaborations with Tabata & Tomoyuki), Nick Raybould (Thought Bubble), the tales that make up Brain Pills’ new EP of that name – released today exclusively for tQ subscribers – constantly unearth the foreboding sensory envelopment of life in a small town. Stone’s subzero, Larry Lifeless, Bobby Soxx vocal delivery is burned up by Vest’s feral guitars, held together by Raybould’s “drunk monk drumming”.
Opener ‘F.Y.E.O’ delivers pulverising piledriver riffs. Primal drums drag the track through a combination of the guitar forms of Rusted Shut and The Drunks. Loose repetition soaked in fuzz-gain overdrive. ‘Waste A Day’ spares little time blowing the listener back against a brick wall and shattering their spinal cord into an apple core. Haunting vocals hover over an up-tempo backbeat, as 12,000 degree guitars feedback throughout it all.
Vest has collaborated with Raybould on various projects over the years, while Stone didn’t take long to respond to the invitation to contribute some vocals. “Adam’s vocal tone and melodies are great. I liked his work in Poundland,” Vest says. “All the music was recorded and tracked before I sent them to him. His vocals were tracked that week. Respect.”
Partly inspired by the use of layered guitar octaves and the vocal style on the Archaic EP by Rudimentary Peni, Goatshead developed via Vest “layering up old and new fuzz and distortion pedals. Especially my old Drunks digi-tech and a custom Moose Electronics ultra fuzz infinity sustainer pedal.” In all its sonic scourge, Brain Pills offers a blend of noise rock, dirge punk and psychedelia, uncompromising and strangely expansive – an idea reflected in Raybould’s grotesque, otherworldly and fantastical artwork.
Perhaps, Vest has seen and dwelled with the creatures that crawl along the hellbound terrains of Goatshead, where the tales are etched into his memory banks – the “stuff that goes on in my neighborhood. Observations and interactions. Situations and gossip from the local maniacs. Purposely, the vocals are a blur of tone, scowls. Yet, at certain points you hear certain words or phrases that change your headspace, put you into that place of existence. Similar to the method on the guitars and bass, it’s all about the trails, it glues everything together. I’ve experimented further with the vocals and sonics for Goatshead 2 and I am currently looking for a label to release two albums.”
Feedback sputters intermittently, throughout the album like spikes through sonic walls. An integral component in unlocking the unhinged feel of Brain Pills was the reappearance of a pedal in Vest’s life, one that unlocks some of the power on the album like an excavated relic. “In May 2024, I was sorting through old guitars, pedals, junk, stuff to clear out. I found a guitar pedal that I’ve had for years and years,” Vest says. It reminded him of his time using it in The Drunks, an extremely influential group whose sound has been cloned by many. “It looked like it had been scorched by blue flame and buried underground for centuries. It still worked! The sound of it took me back to that time. The unique feedback attribute it has, it’s relentless. The sound of it reminded me of that time, riffs and changes I had written for the Drunks, but were never used. ‘Brain Pills’ was a ‘song’ I wrote at the time if I remember correctly.”
The record explores what Vest terms “microcosmos” in musical domains. Specifics of rock “sort of like a small hemisphere of influence,” expanded into explosive new interpretations. “Instead of cleaning up transitions, changes and ‘wrong notes’ I blended and crossfaded guitar and bass tracks, so they phase in and out of time and frequency,” he says. But Vest’s quick to distance this reluctance to clean up the record – this purposeful gluing of fragments together giving Goatshead that burbling, straight-to-tape energy – from being anything akin to ‘lo-fi’. “Loosely blending changes doesn’t necessarily make an album lo-fi. It just flips the idea of having tight chord changes in rock music, I guess. Many records in this style can be too strict these days, I think. Changes can be feared and repetition can be used to mask this. I just embraced its dissonance,” the musician explains.
Possessing the vibes of Nightstick, the slow burn acid attack of ‘Green Crack’ crushes with mid tempo, heavy, simplistic riffs and repetitive vocal harmonies – undoubtedly the most psychedelic and immersive track on this EP. Next, ‘Town’ tricks us into a spat of cackling hi-hats, stop-start techniques similar to The Sonics, and Crime-inspired grooves, a masterful feat of primal rite exercised by Raybould. “Nick’s drumming is repetitive, tight and loose,” comments Vest. “He sways and this works well with all the guitar phasing on the album. The feedback gives the track an intentional hollow beginning, yet the open discordance of the choruses brings it back to full horror show.”
Finally, an unintentioned ‘cover’ of inspiring riffs from way back when, a detuned combo of Crime’s ‘Piss On Your Dog’ and Stick Men With Ray Guns’ ‘Christian Rat Attack’ that melts some of the riffs from each tune into a mammoth rock dirge, converging together and colliding against the same unholy motor. “I used to listen to them a lot when I was young,” Vest recalls. “Tracked this song last, then realised at the time that I was playing those riffs, the same notes. It was just a stream of consciousness combined with coincidence.”
Gateshead? Goatshead. ‘If you know, you know, if you don’t, then… lucky you.’
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