If you want to be in a band, the usual protocol is to bring together your mates, see what everyone likes and go from there, creating your first pay-what-you-want album of freeform jazz influenced grindcore. However, what if the sound you want to forge cannot be found in the pockets of your peers? What if you have to look further afield? Enter Good Tiger, who after the demise of their previous endeavor The Safety Fire, guitarists Derya Nagle and Joaquin Ardiles called on the vocal talents of ex-Tesseract man Elliot Coleman to fill in the gap they needed to carry on. From there a hugely successful Indiegogo campaign and intercontinental connection put together their full debut ’A Head Full of Moonlight’.
With the music for this debut transferred from brain to reel in three different locations around the world, you would think it would be easy to spot gaps and leaks in the band’s maiden voyage. Actually ‘A Head Full of Moonlight’ is a watertight play-by-play of silky smooth prog for the modern music fan. ‘Where Are the Birds’ pitter-patters with sensual grooves and cutesy fret-poking, while ‘Snake Oil’ injects more of a galloping pace with harsh jabs and floating melodies. ‘Latchkey Kids’ follows the laid-back path of carefully paced chords and galaxy-crossing visuals, while closer ‘67 Pontiac Firebird’ borrows Coheed And Cambria-esque chorus talents and moulds them together with darkened metal growls and abrasive breakdowns. What results is a stupendous display of space age imagery and soaring song writing of the highest order.
For a band who have not stood all together in the same room during the process of creating this record, Good Tiger convincingly and confidently saunter through ‘A Head Full of Moonlight’ with a quirk in their step and a twinkle of the unusual in their eye. Putting modern day progressive metal in its most accessible and infectious form, the band risen from the ashes of their past with a new sense of musicianship and creativity painted across their faces.
3.5/5
’A Head Full of Moonlight’ by Good Tiger is released on 6th November.
Good Tiger links: Facebook|Twitter
Words by Jack Rogers (@JackMRog)
