Search - Goblin Cock :: Come With Me If You Want to Live

Goblin Cock Aint No Joke Band!

Paul Aragon | Virginia | 02/04/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Goblin Cock - Come With Me If You Want To Live is an album that sounds less and less metal the more times you listen to it. What eventually emerges is an amazingly crafted and extremely rewarding concept album of a very high order. It is a hybrid of heavily amped distorted pop with metal overtones that pushes the boundaries of its genres, placing it into a catagory that defies description, except to say that it is Rob Crow at his best. I personally believe that Rob Crow reaches full realization of his potential in 2003 when Pinback released the EP Offcell. Since then he has continued to churn out one significant recording after another. It would be easy to dismiss this CD without ever hearing it, simply because of the name of the band, and also because the debute album Bagged and Boarded was itself rather tongue in cheek, and experimentally rough around the edges in its approach. Unlike its predecessor, Come With Me If You Want To Live is fully realized. Rob Crow has taken this album totally seriously, and as such has recorded a masterpiece that is as refined and carefully crafted as anything he has ever done in his stellar career. It is a recording that rivals the last two full length Pinback albums, The Ladies - They Mean Us, and Other Men - Wake Up Swimming. This CD works as a cohesive whole in which the sum of all its parts flow flawlessly and organically, taking the listener by force from one song to the next on a wild enthralling ride that they better strap themselves into.



Speaking in Tongues.



My personal favorite track is the eigth, it's a song called Mylar. Even though Tom's Song (T.O.F.) and We Got a Bleeder are designed to be the most radio excessable hits off of the album, Mylar is its most psychedelic offering. It starts out in break neck pace, hectically flying in full sprint before a defining destinctive rhythm motif takes over the whole song. There are a couple moments in which a wash of submerged voices come out of the mix sounding almost like they are speaking in tongues. Then at the midway point Rob Crow's guitar starts letting out demonic cries in between the pauses of the rhythm motif. Before this song closes out, this motif starts to resemble a powerfully pulsating heart beat, as if this song has been on an adrenaline rush the whole time. It fades out with a loop of what at first seems to be Tibetan Monks chanting, but upon careful listening turns out to be auctioneers...They too sound like they are speaking in tongues. Judging from the lyrics of the song, it would seem that he is suggesting that our human rights are being auctioned off to the highest bidder. I have this dream of one day jumping out of an airplane from 13,000 feet and skydiving back down to Earth, I think I just found the theme song for that event. The last time a song has jazzed me up this much was when I first heard San Cristobal De Las Casas by Swirlies back in the Mid 1990's. In a nut shell, this album kicks major league butt from here to Mexico...Rush out and buy a copy immediately."