ASTRAL GOAT DOMINION - Only Lucifer and Fuzz album review.

 ASTRAL GOAT DOMINION - Only Lucifer and Fuzz

Italy's Astral Goat Dominion sounds exactly like their name suggests—somewhere between cosmic worship and horned invocation, all caked in enough fuzz to choke a vintage Orange stack. This debut full-length crawled out of the earth on Halloween 2025 like something summoned rather than recorded, and Marco Oniric's vision for "ritual stoner doom" isn't just marketing speak.

The opening one-two of "Intro Acida" bleeding into "Lucifer (Part I)" sets the template: drum machines pounding like ceremonial heartbeats, synths that reek of incense and bad trips, and riffs so thick they practically solidify mid-air. The Electric Wizard worship is obvious but never lazy—these Italians understand that copping Jus Oborn's tone means you'd better bring something else to the altar. What they bring is atmosphere, drenched in darkwave textures that feel more Bela Lugosi's Dead than Dopethrone.

"The Acid Ritual" earns its seven-minute runtime, building from narcotic crawl to full-on Sabbathian trudge without losing the thread. The drum machine work might throw purists, but there's something genuinely unsettling about the martial precision against those sludgy, almost improvisational guitar passages. It shouldn't work. It does.

"Make the Sludge Doom great again" is either a middle finger to political appropriation or just Italian absurdism—either way, it rips. Four minutes of pummeling groove that makes you wonder why they bothered with the longer tracks, then you remember: this is ritual music. You need the extended ceremonies to properly invoke whatever goat-headed deity they're channelling.

The production keeps everything murky enough to maintain mystique without burying the hooks. When that main riff on "Only Lucifer and Fuzz" kicks in, you feel it in your spine. The whole record sounds like it was tracked in a basement lit by black candles, which is either true or exactly what they wanted you to think.

Not reinventing the wheel here, but when the wheel is this heavy and rolls this smoothly through the void, who cares? Solid debut from a project that understands doom isn't just slow—it's ceremonial.

FFO: Electric Wizard, early Sleep, Bongripper, anyone who thinks drum machines belong in doom

https://astralgoatdominion.bandcamp.com/album/only-lucifer-and-fuzz-2