Four purveyors of cosmic weirdness, hypnotic riffs and tales from the other side of the ordinary, Goatriders have spent nine years building a world with its own geography, peculiar inhabitants and gloriously crooked vernacular. Across their previous albums, wandering wizards, carrot mages, uncanny creatures and unlikely encounters have emerged from the band’s fevered imagination, taking shape in a heady brew of heavy fuzz, adventurous psychedelia and a knack for making the downright bizarre feel strangely compelling.
Goatriders are, at their essence, psychedelic fabulists. Their songs conjure occult visions, cosmic wanderings and unruly inhabitants, spinning a mythology that gathers new lore with every cloven step. Yet the Goativerse is more than a cast of outlandish characters and arcane adventures. Its magic takes hold through the interplay of four connected musicians who know precisely when to lock into a groove, when to let a riff run feral and when to drive a jam to the brink of dissolution. Beneath the fantastical tales lies a band with the instinct, chemistry and instrumental command to make the impossible feel flesh and blood. The absurdity has teeth; beneath the arcane pageantry, something raw and vital is always stirring and the mythology never gets in the way of a good noise.
The first taste of Season of Slumber comes in the shape of “Murder // Mountain,” a ten-minute-and-forty-one-second descent into psychedelic disorientation. A searing, riff-driven jam forms the track’s molten core, the guitars twisting above a rhythm section whose loose, instinctive interplay is anchored by the drums’ measured, almost metronomic pulse. The bass carves its own melodic path beneath the heavier excursions, while sitar, djembe and bells cut through the distortion with flashes of ancient ceremony. Rather than charging towards a conventional climax, Goatriders let the music find its own crooked route, building and releasing tension as it goes.
Johansson describes the song as “a real bad trip wrapped up in a ten minute envelope.” What could go wrong?
There are distant echoes of The Doors in its shadowy, incantatory atmosphere, while the guitar’s unbridled explorations carry a spark of Jimi Hendrix’s improvisational spirit. But Goatriders are following no one else’s map: “Murder // Mountain” draws the listener into a world where the ground shifts beneath your feet and the destination remains deliciously uncertain.
Ever a constant, Death stalks the trail in “Murder // Mountain,” keeping pace with those who wander it, waiting for the moment they finally surrender to its pull. Many follow the hippie dream like a procession towards the inevitable, mistaking free will for ultimate freedom. But this traveler has no intention of obediently joining the ranks.
Ever a constant, Death stalks the trail in “Murder // Mountain,” keeping pace with those who wander it, waiting for the moment they finally surrender to its pull. Many follow the hippie dream like a procession towards the inevitable, mistaking free will for ultimate freedom. But this traveler has no intention of obediently joining the ranks.
He knows death is on his heels, and rather than bowing his head, he calls the bastard out. The mountain caves in on itself, leaving an abyss where heaven should be. Johansson’s words hang in the air, caught between ancient warning and open-ended revelation. That tension runs through the track as it does the entire album; cosmic visions with dirt beneath its nails, occult grandeur with a mischievous grin, and four musicians willing to follow an idea wherever it leads.
As the Swedish quartet returns with its third full-length, Season of Slumber, drawing the Goativerse into deeper shadow. The winding jams, molten fuzz and ritualistic intensity remain, but this time they venture into darker currents, where old certainties begin to buckle and the search for truth leads beyond the limits of
As the Swedish quartet returns with its third full-length, Season of Slumber, drawing the Goativerse into deeper shadow. The winding jams, molten fuzz and ritualistic intensity remain, but this time they venture into darker currents, where old certainties begin to buckle and the search for truth leads beyond the limits of
what we think we know.
It is the same wild imagination at work: fearless, freewheeling and forever nosing around the edges of the unknown, where stranger revelations are most certainly waiting. Following 2022’s The Traveler, Season of Slumber sheds the collective of the Carrot Wizards and brings the more solitary figure back into the fore. This tale is focused on the One Wizard.
Long confined to his tower, this ageing hierophant languishes in prophetic stagnation, guarding the accumulated wisdom of a lifetime while the world beyond his walls turns without him. His tower has become both sanctuary and sentence, its shelves heavy with the knowledge of ages, its windows opening onto a world he has all but forgotten how to read. Then the veil begins to lift. Ghosts of yonder stir, old visions take on unfamiliar shapes, and the truths by which he has lived begin to look less like answers than walls of his own making. The wizard stands at the threshold of a revelation his learning could never have prepared him for.
Across the album, witches, warlocks, devils and demons gather beneath the night sky, drawn towards a new temple of the sun, bearing offerings to the totem of noise. Yet amid the ceremony and incantation, a more dangerous possibility takes hold: that wisdom, hoarded and held beyond question, can harden into dogma; that a lifetime spent seeking truth can leave a person devoted to the very beliefs that keep it out of reach. For The One Wizard, no ancient text can furnish the answer, no incantation guarantees safe passage. To go further, he must risk the collapse of the world his knowledge has built around him, and look beyond its ruins allowing the new to take its place.
Across the album, witches, warlocks, devils and demons gather beneath the night sky, drawn towards a new temple of the sun, bearing offerings to the totem of noise. Yet amid the ceremony and incantation, a more dangerous possibility takes hold: that wisdom, hoarded and held beyond question, can harden into dogma; that a lifetime spent seeking truth can leave a person devoted to the very beliefs that keep it out of reach. For The One Wizard, no ancient text can furnish the answer, no incantation guarantees safe passage. To go further, he must risk the collapse of the world his knowledge has built around him, and look beyond its ruins allowing the new to take its place.
Goatriders leave these questions suspended in the smoke. The wizard’s passage becomes a meeting point between myth and lived experience, a tale of spiritual disquiet in which the pursuit of enlightenment can be every bit as disorientating as the darkness it promises to dispel.
Mixed and mastered by Joona Hassinen at Studio Underjord, “Murder // Mountain” captures that unruly spirit as old certainties crumble and the possibility of renewal flickers into view. The mountain is falling. The season of slumber is drawing to a close. Eternal vision awaits.
Mixed and mastered by Joona Hassinen at Studio Underjord, “Murder // Mountain” captures that unruly spirit as old certainties crumble and the possibility of renewal flickers into view. The mountain is falling. The season of slumber is drawing to a close. Eternal vision awaits.
Season of Slumber is now available to pre-order through Urskog Records ahead of its release on Friday, November 13, 2026.
Goatriders are:
The Goat King:
Stoffe - Vocals, conga
The Brothers Grimm:
Robin - Guitar
Jimmie - Bass, Sitar
The Troubadour:
Daniel Pihl - Drums, djembe, bells, art & design.
Thanks to URSKOG Records for the details.
