The Fantastic Journey of Goblin
By Goblin (review)
This is the third of a series of reviews on here going through a bunch of those 70’s “so ahead of their times” bands. It started when I wrote something about This Mortal Coil’s version of Big Star’s “Kangaroo”, and people started finding my webpage because of that, hence the review of Big Star’s Third: Sister Lovers and Van Der Graaf Generator’s The Least We Can Do is Wave to Each Other. Because I am also a fan of horror films and lower budget cinema, it would be natural to review Goblin, a criminally underrated band. Then in terms of horror films, it has been more and more my inclination to follow closely the films that my old boss William Powell at the Sci-Fi Center in Las Vegas shows at his screenings, because I feel that William Powell has a kind of genius for curating such things. Most of the better horror films I’ve seen I’ve either seen because of him or he’s ended up showing it. He screens films almost every weekend, that’s quite a skill that he’s been able to avoid showing a lot of the lost and poor films like Humanoids from the Deep and Insemenoid. Powell likes Argento so the band Goblin is on the kosher list of 70’s “way ahead of their times bands” that the new review could be because of their connection with the films of Argento, Powell has shown Suspira which Goblin did the soundtrack for.
Legendary Italian horror director Dario Argento found this progressive rock band in the 70’s and used them to score his zombie films. They are perhaps the most underrated band in the history of rock, except amongst horror film fans, who often revere them. The question is I’m sure does their music stand up on its own seeing as you can buy their music on its own. The answer is yes. They are an incredible band on their own. The notion of a horror obsessed “gothic” rock was still a number of years away when Goblin were first called into do the soundtrack for the Argento film Deep Red in 1975, a good five years before the term “goth” turned up. Do not misunderstand me- Goblin do not sound like a goth band all the time. The track Tenebre sounds like the cheesiest disco ever made if anything, with the kind of old vintage analog electronics bands like Air and Stereolab went nuts for in the late 90’s, around the time it became fashionable to be very into the Vampyre Lesbos soundtrack in the early years of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I’m not sure it sounds like they are using a Moog. That’s what it sounds like. Everyone in Williamsburg was trying to get their hands on a Moog in Williamsburg in 1996, it felt like.
During the 80’s though, they did make a whole lot of cheesy 80’s sounding soundtrack music. Particularly a winner on this collection is the theme from Phenomena. That is that weird one Argento made about the chick that communicates with insects. That’s really good. The whole album is really good actually.
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