Track By Tracks: King Potenaz - Goat Rider (2023)

1. Among The Ruins:

It was the very first track to be composed two and a half years ago and it was always meant to be the opening track of the album... the song has a quite simple structure and, in the main part, recalls the classic stems of doom bands like Sleep, Electric Wizard, Monolord, etc. to then become faster and more rhythmic in the final part... the lyrics instead focuses precisely on the figure of King Potenaz who rises from his black coffin among the ruins of a temple and begins the story behind the album concept.

2. Pyramids Planet:

It is the natural continuation of Among The Ruins in terms of story but also musically speaking, as it tells of the planet on which the story of King Potenaz and his emissary, the Goat Rider is set... a mostly desert planet, with two suns, on which psychedelic rites of all kinds take place. the song begins with a psychedelic intro that immediately pours into the heaviness of the main riff and then leaves room for the verse in which the lysergic voice and the arabesque guitar line meet... the ending instead is a pressing mid-tempo that goes to close the song.

3. Goat Rider:

The title track is the ideal closure of the initial triptych of songs and has the aim of presenting the figure of the infernal motorcyclist with the head of a goat, the herald of King Potenaz, and his crazy race in search of damned souls for his master. on a musical level, it can be said that the track exactly represents our idea of making music and perfectly sums up the message we want to give to the listeners... there is the desert stoner of the first part, the dreamy psychedelia of the bridge which introduces the occult doom of the long final part in which we have added some majestic choirs that have the purpose of making the whole piece even darker.

4. Pazuzu (3:33):

As for Pazuzu, we wanted to create something a little different than the other songs on the album, first of all, it doesn't have the classic song form but it's a crescendo from start to finish and is embellished by the splendid and ethereal voice of our friend Mara Sibilio aka Sibilla. the lyrics were written by another old friend of ours, Marcella Loconte, and are based on the perverse and morbid love story between the demon Pazuzu and a mortal woman.

5. Cosmic Voyagers:

The song is the only instrumental track of the whole album... it is placed exactly in the middle of the tracklist and has the aim, with its ethereal and dreamy guitar melodies that take the listener on an imaginary interstellar journey, to create a momentary pause to catch your breath and get ready for to the explosive finale of the record... Cosmic Voyagers is our Planet Caravan, obviously without comparison...

6.Moriendoom (La Ballata di Ippolita Oderisi):

As well as Pazuzu, deviates a bit from the general concept of the album and goes to explore our darker introspective side... also in this case we decided not to follow the classic song form and let ourselves be carried away in a crescendo which culminates with an almost progressive final part with bass and synths that take the stage... the lyrics, which in this case are spoken words, was written by Marcella Loconte (like Pazuzu) and takes up the events of a 70s Italian horror movie "The Antichrist", whose leading character is none other than Ippolita Oderisi, a young woman suffering from paralysis and victim of demonic possession.

7.Monolithic:

This is one of the heaviest and most “doom” tracks on the album with that intro that almost makes you think of a funeral march... the guitars and bass are heavy as rock and hypnotic and proceed with a cadenced rhythm until the explosion of the chorus and the fast and swirling final part... for this reason, when the guys at Argonauta asked us to choose a track as the first single, we immediately thought of Monolithic... perhaps it is the song that identifies us most of all. The lyrics, on the other hand, are inspired by a dream in which a man finds himself in the presence of a strange monolith and suddenly ends up in the middle of a magical rite celebrated by an obscure wizard and surrounded by thousands of souls... obviously,  everything is taking place on the elusive Planet of the Pyramids referred to in the track of the same name.

8. Dancing Plague:

Is the longest and most psychedelic song on the album, composed of a guitar intro with echos and synths, a very stoner verse/chorus part, a psychedelic and trippy central part that prepares for a very heavy and devastating closing... and it is our tribute to the darkest and most extravagant traditions of our territory, southern Italy. the lyrics, in fact, speak of the "St. Vitus Dance" also known as the "Ballo della Taranta"... in fact, according to legend, between the end of the 1800s and the mid-1900s, in a certain period of the year the women who worked in the fields they were stung by the tarantula and began to dance in an uncoordinated manner, foaming at the mouth and writhing until they fell to the ground exhausted... it was later discovered that this state of euphoria was caused by nothing more than a parasitic fungus of the rye, the ergot that contains lysergic acid, one of the chemical components of LSD.