It’s been a while since I committed thoughts to paper regarding new music: it could be the overwhelming amount of new music being recorded during the pandemic, or it could be a reaction to the dreadful homogeneity of said music. After a while, everything starts to sound, well, if not the same, at least very similar. Thankfully, the most recent record from Finland’s oddball mystics of black metal, Goats of Doom, has dispelled a significant proportion of that mediocre miasma with its mélange of styles and sounds in homage to the Hindu destroyer, Shiva – cunningly depicted in a Baphomet pose on the album cover, connecting well with the band’s earlier Thelema-based themes. What really stands out about Shiva is the band’s willingness to embrace alternate approaches. Earlier releases (such as 20...