Godcaster: Godcaster

For Godcaster, the whole lot must be magnified or it’s not value analyzing. Each facet of the Brooklyn collective appears designed to overstimulate: their six eclectic members, their out-of-breath, cosmological lyrics, and their dedication to music titles nobody has considered earlier than (instance: “Tiger Surrogate Hunts the Praying Mantis”). They’re a band clothed in aureate imagery and devoted to taking itself severely. “We’re Godcaster and we’re the greatest band in the world,” vocalist Judson Kolk introduced at a current New York present, with a matter-of-fact calmness. After chopping their tooth within the Philadelphia DIY circuit, Godcaster have developed to craft creative art-rock on a monumental scale, highly effective sufficient to lend credence to their confidence.

Whereas their dwell present is a big a part of the enchantment, Godcaster additionally translate their livid, youthful power into their studio recordings. Beating inside their self-titled second album is the heartbeat of English art-punk band Cardiacs, mixed with a mania like what would occur if Deerhoof began a cult. Godcaster shouldn’t be background music: These songs really feel like sizzling, hellish wastelands, and listening right through is an energetic train. “Didactic Flashing Antidote” is a relentless 10-minute journey that resounds in your chest. The dirge-like “Death’s Head Eyed Hawkmoth” may soundtrack a demented Western; Kolk’s voice meanders and pleads whereas the band stays impossibly regular, instilling hysteria and helplessness.

Godcaster’s early work—a spate of recorded-live EPs of their Philadelphia days and 2020’s Lengthy-Haired Locusts—was looser and extra capricious, like a band that fashioned in of Montreal message boards. However as they proceed to mature, they’ve slipped into one thing that feels non secular and hypnotic. Vocal duties rotate between members of the band, and their onstage supply is harking back to a wierd off-Broadway play. Elephant 6-esque lyrics like “I see lovers speak in tone/Smell anthurium’s pheromones” and “Ecstatic reaction/In fleshly contraption” are urgently forged towards a background knowledgeable by Native American and Greco-Roman folklore. To Godcaster, the picture of affection isn’t something lower than exploding planets or weeping demigods.

There’s a relentlessness to Godcaster’s magnitude that often verges on monotony. Whereas their new, extra targeted sound is efficient—they’re safely out of “elevated jam band” territory—by the point you attain the 11-minute-plus “Draw Breath Cry Out,” it seems like they may have dealt all their playing cards. However when flutist Von Lee sings on the stripped-down penultimate monitor “Pluto Shoots His Gaze Into the Sun,” her gossamer voice is arresting all by itself. “How beautiful/My heart is full,” she sings. It’s a significant breath on the finish of Godcaster, a vibrant contrasting wash earlier than you plunge again into the brutality of nearer “Gut Sink Moan.” On Godcaster, the band maintains its attribute mayhem and mythology whereas persevering with to diversify: You possibly can already hear how far they’ll preserve pushing ahead.