Goatcraft – All For Naught
Music digested with difficulty takes on a variety of forms, and dark ambient, though in some cases devoid of the extreme tenets of guitar, bass, and drums, can unnerve as easily as the most blast-beaten of sounds. Bad-Casio Burzum arguably jumpstarted the Blackened synth-dive into Sodom, and others after like Vinterriket held the frost-flamed torch high, but a wholly fresh bent on these sounds has been a while in coming. Now comes Goatcraft, a sole entity sprung from Texan riverbeds attacking the keys of his instrument with such force no need of additional percussion or stringed instrument is even necessary. Arpeggiated neoclassical piano runs provide the tense blackness here, moving forward and backward in a terror-filled undertow unrelenting in its effort to drown the listener within an ultimately unique take on despair. All For Naught could accompany ’20s-’30s horror films such as Nosferatu perfectly, and truly, you will know the fear of being cornered by a grey-shaded abomination if you submit yourself wholly to Goatcraft’s performances. Simply close your eyes while listening to Lonegoat’s compositions on headphones and you’ll see what I mean. More familiar dark ambient flourishes and creepy sounds are sprinkled here and there, but make no mistake, the focus remains the original piano playing, for when the mastery of shadow-filled, frozen scales dominates a lost soul this completely, little else is needed to conjure a feeling of funereal darkness. By stripping dark ambient back down to its most primal element – the fingering of ivory and ebony – and doing so with high levels of skill, melancholy, and frustration, Goatcraft’s All For Naught will inspire others to rely less on electronic effects and more on a deeper unearthing of arrangements that have stirred souls for hundreds – perhaps thousands – of years. -Jim
Forbidden Records
Worm Gear 
Finally getting to this one. What a gem. I love this record. Refreshing as ice lemon aid in the summer ironically