As Pitchfork notes and any fan of The Mountain Goats can attest, John Darnielle is a metal fan. FYF Fest in Los Angeles even made the bold move to schedule The Mountain Goats directly before Sleep, a move that didn’t work for some of the Latino heshers in the audience, but pleased the indie-folk singer to no end. But this video, which is cryptic in it’s intent, reveals that The Mountain Goats and metal are about to get just a little bit closer.
As the band members introduce themselves, which still includes Superchunk drummer and my favorite Facebook status updater Jon Wurster, the final two characters are strangely unfamiliar to the fans who know the band as a trio. The first is engineer Brandon Eggleston and the second turns out to be the producer of 4 songs off the new record, Hate Eternal frontman and former Morbid Angel guitarist Erik Rutan. While this may be strange for fans of the death metal icon, let me honestly say, it’s strange for the fans of the indie icon as well. This appears to just be a fling, though, as The Mountain Goats also recorded in three other cities for the nameless impeding collection.
But that is getting too far ahead. Before that, The Mountain Goats will perform an original score for the silent film Sir Arne’s Treasure on December 14th in San Francisco and have a date scheduled just before Christmas back home. Look for new music from The Mountain Goats in 2011 and the link to the strange promo video is below.
Hey, America from JD on Vimeo.
All Eternals Decks will be out March 29th via Merge. Here is what Darnielle had to say about it:
Hi everybody. Hope you have all been well and are keeping warm as the colder months close in. So yeah: as you may have learned yesterday, we spent much of 2010 inside recording studios, safe from the vitamin-giving rays of the sun. I wrote a bunch of new songs, and then we recorded them all and set some aside because they didn’t quite fit in with the others, and then there were thirteen survivors when we were done, which are now ready to claw their way to the surface.
The album is called ALL ETERNALS DECK, and if you have ever watched say a 70s occult-scare movie where one of the scenes involves a couple of people visiting a storefront fortune teller, getting their cards read, and then trying to feel super-hopeful about what they hear when what they’re visibly actually feeling is dread, then you have a pretty decent idea of what the album is all about. If you know the feeling of exultation that comes with having recognized the oncoming train of fate, then that’s the other thing the album’s about. JD, wouldn’t it be easier to write an album of, like, love songs? Probably, I would not know, my focus is mainly death scenes and downtown Portland. It’s not like there aren’t people in love either dying or getting arrested at 3rd and Yamhill, so really, if you can stretch your definition of “love song” we can all be happy. Other possible points of reference include Burnt Offerings, Go Ask Alice, and that one scene in The Warriors where they’re on the train and the sun’s coming up and they’re safe but you know the scars are permanent now. Reversals of fortune and faces at the window and sudden unexpected screams of triumph here and there. Possible exits from the long-locked basement. These sorts of moments.
As with the last album, we treated the recording sessions as commando raids on several studios with a few different producers: at Fidelitorium with John Congleton; at Q Division with Brandon Eggleston; at Mission Sound with Scott Solter; and, as I said yesterday and am still jumping up and down about, at Mana Recording Studios with Erik Rutan. The album’s coming out on Merge in the U.S. on March 29th, 2011; Moorworks has got it for Japan, and our good friends at Remote Control in Australia are holding it down down under, and will release it on March 26th. I hope we get to tour all those places and more next year!
Here are the songs on All Eternals Deck. Their names, I mean. It would be totally premature to just post all the songs. See you soon!
1. Damn These Vampires
2. Birth of Serpents
3. Estate Sale Sign
4. Age of Kings
5. The Autopsy Garland
6. Beautiful Gas Mask
7. High Hawk Season
8. Prowl Great Cain
9. Sourdoire Valley Song
10. Outer Scorpion Squadron
11. For Charles Bronson
12. Never Quite Free
13. Liza Forever Minnelli
