Swedish rockers Year Of The Goat have just released their fourth album entitled Trivia Goddess. Year Of The Goat’s keyboardist Mikael “Pope” Popovic spoke with Metal Express Radio about their new album, playing the Summer Dying Loud Festival, plans for their next record, and more. Check out the chat below!
Metal Express Radio: Your band, Year Of The Goat have just released their fourth album entitled Trivia Goddess, what can you tell fans about your new album?
Pope: It’s the bomb! It is the best album so far, we think. Not that we hate the other albums, but it’s like with having kids, there’s always secretly a favorite! We began working on the album slightly outside of our comfort zone, we usually have some sort of a plan for a theme, but this time we were kind of tired of too many constraints, we had just come out of writing the soundtrack for the Finnish movie Heavier Trip so we needed to be chill about demands and just have fun making music.
MER: How was the writing and recording process having this being your fourth album?
Pope: Since we didn’t have a plan, it felt a bit freeing as well, but only a couple of songs in the theme were revealed to us. It began with the song “Alucarda”, it was as if that song lead us into the more feminine themes of witchcraft, Hekate, Lilith, Eve and more. For the core members, who have been the longest in the band, it feels like we know each other well enough to not have to compromise anymore, we try each other’s ideas and are usually in agreement with what we like the best. A nice thing for the fourth album is that we have a routine of sorts and can always begin working as soon as we meet up in the studio.
MER: The You’ve released two songs from Trivia Goddess, do you feel they represent the album well?
Poor: In that they represent the musical variety that is somewhat a trademark of Year of the Goat, yes.
MER: You recently played the Summer Dying Loud Festival in Poland, how was that experience for you and the rest of Year Of The Goat?
Pope: Yes that was very recently, for me it was nice. I met a Polish promoter I haven’t seen in eight years, and I made a new friend. But like the others I like doing festivals because we get to not only play ourselves, but we also get to listen to a lot of really cool music. This time I was especially excited for Cult of Luna and Venom.
MER: You’ll soon be touring with Night Eternal, what are your expectations on the upcoming tour?
Pope: Since we haven’t been out in awhile I hope we will meet some people we’ve met before and also get to know some more people. We’re expecting The Night Eternal to be great, we hear a lot of good things about them. We hope for more people to get to know our music as well.
MER: What do you see as plans for Year Of The Goat after the Night Eternal tour?
Pope: We have talked about beginning work on the next album, hopefully some more touring in the spring, festivals next year. We also plan for “Great Success” …ha ha!
MER: Is there anyone you hope to tour with and why?
Pope: I’m not sure, I’m of the more pragmatic persuasion, any band or artist that would help us reach out to the right crowd for our music, the crowd that would like what we do, but who doesn’t quite know it yet. Other than that, we are happy if anyone wants us along, that band will be my hope.
MER: Since you have such a unique sound, is there any audience you’ve had to win over while on tour?
Pope: We have several times played festivals with a lot “harder” bands, Black Metal type bands, and so forth, we thought we were a bit misplaced, but it turned out fine. Maybe our esthetics and sometimes somewhat gloomy and melancholic feel is right. We’ve asked promoters why and they’ve always said they wanted something to break off from the blast beats and growly singing for a while. It would only take a song or so until we won the audience over to some extent.
MER: Is there anywhere you hope to play live that you haven’t and why?
Pope: I want to be able to sing like Johnny Cash “I’ve been everywhere man”, but we always like to go somewhere we haven’t been yet, and that’s quite a few places, and we would of course want to go back to places we’ve been already and hopefully draw a larger crowd. I would like to visit Spanish speaking countries since I’m trying to learn Spanish. Japan would be awesome too, I’ve been before, but not with this band, I loved it!
MER: Out of your four albums, what is one you would suggest to a new fan and why?
Pope: Right now it is our brand new one. But the first one Angels’ Necropolis sort has a special place in our hearts and so does the second and the third…and the Ep’s…damn good question…and hard! I can’t answer, listen to them all and find your own favorites.
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