For Godcaster, everything has to be magnified or it’s not worth examining. Every aspect of the Brooklyn collective seems designed to overstimulate: their six eclectic members, their breathless, cosmological lyrics, and their commitment to song titles no one had thought of before (example: “Tiger Surrogate Hunts the Praying Mantis”). . They are a band dressed in golden imagery and dedicated to taking themselves seriously. “We’re Godcaster and we’re the best band in the world,” frontman Judson Kolk announced at a recent show in New York with natural calm. After testing themselves on the Philadelphia DIY circuit, Godcaster have evolved to create inventive art-rock on a monumental scale, powerful enough to lend credence to their confidence.
While his live show is a big part of the appeal, Godcaster also translates his raging, youthful energy into his studio recordings. Within their self-titled second album beats the heartbeat of English art-punk band Cardiacs, combined with a mania like what would happen if Deerhoof started a cult. god caster It’s not background music – these songs feel like hot, hellish wastelands, and listening to them fully is an active exercise. “Didactic Flashing Antidote” is a relentless 10-minute journey that resonates in your chest. The sort of dirge “Death’s Head Eyed Hawkmoth” could be the soundtrack to a demented western; Kolk’s voice meanders and pleads as the band remains incredibly stable, instilling hysteria and helplessness.
Godcaster’s Early Works: A Series of EPs Recorded Live in His Philadelphia Days and 2020 long haired lobsters—was looser and more capricious, like a band that formed on the message boards of Montreal. But as they continue to mature, they’ve slipped into something that feels religious and hypnotic. Vocal duties rotate among the band members, and their onstage performance is reminiscent of a bizarre Off-Broadway play. Elephant 6-esque lyrics like “I see lovers speak in tune/Smell the anthurium pheromones” and “Ecstatic reaction/In a carnal contraption” pitch urgently against a backdrop informed by Native American and Greco-Roman folklore. For Godcaster, the image of love is never anything less than exploding planets or weeping demigods.
There’s a relentlessness to Godcaster’s magnitude that occasionally borders on monotony. While their new, more focused sound is effective (they’re safely out of “elevated jam band” territory), by the time you get to the 11-plus minutes of “Draw Breath Cry Out,” it feels like they’ve dished out all their efforts. cards But when piper Von Lee sings on the stripped-down penultimate track, “Pluto Shoots His Gaze Into the Sun,” her web-spanning voice commands attention all by itself. “How beautiful / My heart is full”, she sings herself. It is a breath of life at the end of god caster, a vibrant, contrasting wash before plunging back into the brutality of “Gut Sink Moan.” In god casterthe band maintains their trademark chaos and mythology while continuing to diversify – you can already hear how far they will continue to go.
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