Goatmoon – Silver Serpent (2021)

February 25, 2024

A thoroughly disappointing outing from the usually very excellent Goatmoon. I do not dislike Silver Serpent for its departure into dungeon synth, I dislike it because it is a poor effort. Even for the more atmospheric, dreamy end of the genre, where melody and I suppose songwriting are replaced by pure feeling and invocation of mood, Silver Serpent fails to provoke any sort of worthwhile conjuration. Instead, Silver Serpent can be relegated to “video game background music” at best, and an uninspired, pointless spin off at worst.

I really don’t know what went wrong here. The (I assume) synthesizer and folk instrumentation elements are some of the most interesting parts of Goatmoon’s usual sound, an album focusing on these should have been outstanding. I don’t get it.