Melbourne stoner/sludge/groove/doom band Goat Shaman are making the trip to the nation’s capital this weekend for the Canberra Metal Festival featuring Misery, Psycroptic, Abramalin, Werewolves, Alarum, Black Rheno and more.
The band have steadily gone about building a loyal, solid fan base since their inception in 2018 and released their debut self-titled EP early in 2021. They are currently working on the follow-up album, but drummer Max still found time to sit down with HEAVY for a chat about their upcoming shows and more.
“You can expect some heavy riffage,” he replied when quizzed on what punters can expect from their live show. “A bit of shenanigans, some loud noises, and we’ll just be having a good time grooving.”
The style of music played by Goat Shaman is dominated by a handful of major bands, and as such the scope for drawing influence from the genre pool may not be as great as bands from, say, the thrash side of things. We ask Max how difficult it is for a band to take those influences and put their own spin on proceedings.
“There’s elements of things that they do that we really enjoy,” he measured. “We love playing around with polyrhythms and metric modulations and lots of crazy time signatures and such that we like to incorporate into our music and keep it interesting.”
In the full interview, Max talks more about this weekend’s show, which bands he is looking forward to sharing a stage with, the early days of the band, how they came up with their sound, new music, future shows and more.
