Hi, everyone. Getthony Killedtano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of the new Geese album, Getting Killed.

If you've spent any amount of time on the internet looking at rock music, especially underground and left field rock music, most likely you have heard of the New York band Geese at this point. And let me tell you, from my own personal perspective and standpoint, in an age where rock music is growing increasingly gutless and and so is algorithm slop, or whatever the hell you want to call that, Geese's 2023 album, 3D Country, was a breath of fresh air, not just for the way that it functionally and tastefully looked back upon numerous shades and sounds and ideas from the eras of hard rock and blues rock, classic rock, as it were.

I've said many a time, and I will say again, these guys are not dad rock. They are I don't have a dad rock. Yeah, there's a lot of vintage sounds and influences flowing throughout the veins of Geese on that record, and this new one, too. But they play with these sounds, they perform their songs with a youthful, exuberant, exciting, thrilling energy in a way that actually makes them feel like they're coloring outside of the lines a little bit, especially live, because their live shows do tend to get a little all over the place, something pretty well known about the band at this point as they toured behind that 2023 record.

And I have a feeling that trademark loose live performance energy the band has been known to dabble in is a key influence when it came to the writing and recording process of this new album. The band also kicked off the release of this album with a big free performance in New York City in the middle of the afternoon, which provided fans and onlookers a lot of opportunities to capture the band on their phones and the footage to the internet. Some good singles released in the lead up to this album, too, that pretty much affirmed the band would more or less be working with the same round of influences and inspirations.

I will admit, going into this record, I was wondering if Geese would be able to pull it off and essentially continue the momentum they built off of their last record, even though the band is not brand new by any means. They go as far back as 2016. In 2018, they dropped their A Beautiful Memory record. A few years later, in 2021, they had their Projector album, which they made some waves with.

Shortly after their breakthrough 3D Country, frontman Cameron Winter actually dropped a solo album right at the end of 2024, which made it difficult to make time for it personally because I was doing year-end list stuff around that time. When 2025 rolled in, I was trying to cover as many new releases as possible. But eventually, when I did go back to the album, I was awestruck by some of the genius behind the songwriting on this record.

This progression of releases, again, left me wondering, would this forthcoming Geese album essentially feel like another helping of 3D Country? Would it contain ideas and sounds that were maybe more reminiscent of the Cameron Winter solo effort? Would it be something else entirely? If I had to characterize this album in a simple and direct way, if anything, the Cameron Winter record really provided him with the opportunity to focus on his songcraft in a very measured and very purposeful way.

And now this has allowed Geese to really let loose on this new album. The opening track, "Trinidad", is a key example of this as it's a pretty freaky, intense intro with some absolutely nightmarish lyrics, with Winter talking about his daughters being dead, there being a bomb in the car, something about his wife and his husband. What point of view is this man operating from? All I know is many of his descriptions read as both horrifying and surreal. And a lot of the time, he is just screaming his brains out over this pretty unruly psych blues jam with some droopy horns crying out here and there, adding some extra color.

And this track, again, is pretty indicative of the songwriting style to follow onto the rest of the album, because many of the songs past this point are not really carefully structured or assembled. These are not tuneful dioramas. These are more linear flow-state jams where the momentum within the song and the groove just continues across each verse and chorus. That is until the ending just happens.

So yeah, the songs this time around, in comparison with 3D Country, are not nearly as cleanly segmented or directly catchy. There's not a single song on this album, in fact, that snaps with the weirdly slick, poetic romanticism of "I See Myself" or even the concentrated firepower of "2122" or "Mysterious Love". Again, I think a lot of that difference comes down to how loose a lot of the chemistry and performances are between the band on this album.

Going in that direction, that choice has some pros to it and some cons too, because sometimes you do get tracks that come across in a way like a very beautiful, tender moment, but it's obscured in the ruckus of instrumentation, and you're not really getting that clear of a view of it. I'm thinking of "Half Real" as well as "Cobra" to an extent. In fact, the only soft moment on the record that really sees the band steadying to take it all in has to be "Au Pays du Cocaine". The track is the better for it with its patient beat, its orchestra of horns and plucky lead melodies. Of course, Cameron Winter's incredibly just emotional vocal performance that leaves him sounding like a mutant Jim Morrison who swallowed a frog and was somehow allowed to sing a song on Abbey Road.

I do think in a way, going off the rails tends to hurt the album's burners a bit, but it definitely enhances the wilder spots on the record for sure. As across this album, you have these over-the-top performances that are laced with supremely odd grooves and layers as well, with everyone in the band fighting to basically fill up every pocket of empty space within these chaotic mixes.

Case in point, the title track of the record, which is a wild hard rocker, with some nasty riffs and crazy layers of vocal chants that sound absolutely psychotic. This song sounds like what every Burning Man millionaire thinks they're doing, when in fact, they would probably tell you to turn it down if they, I don't know, heard it down the street from their office building. The progression of the song undergoes some really interesting changes, too.

The song "Islands of Men" is another progressively intensifying rocker with maybe some of the most clear messaging on the entire album as well, as Cameron Winter seemingly describes a generation of men who are just continually isolating themselves, running into fantasy and running away from genuine connection.

Moving further into the album, the whole thing finishes off with a very strong final leg. The song "Bow Down" is another tense and nightmarish number, a lot like the opening track, but not quite as much in fight or flight mode. Close, but not exactly. There's almost a Nick Cave vibe to this song, too, like the Let Love In era, but less goth and more protopunk, with a closing jam that is wild enough to soundtrack an old-school Tarantino film chase scene, fight scene, what have you.

The song "Taxes" was a great single, the first one from the album. Loved it when I first heard it. Still love it now in the context of the album. And again, another linear track, but one that has an especially hard transition into a blissful burst of instrumentation in the second half. In fact, I would say one of the most uplifting moments of any Geese song, instrumentally. It's just a shame that this passage doesn't last quite forever.

And then we have the closing track "Long Island City Here I Come", which is just the definition of moving momentum. I feel like I'm in a fast moving car when I'm listening to this song, and it's not just because of Mr. Winter's lyrics, the pacing of the very quick drums as well as the pianos. It's just absolutely unrelenting, and the band doesn't really seem to care if the performance comes across a little messy or cluttered or whatever, because they just really want to keep up that speed, that intensity.

Winter vocally comes through with an insane swagger. The instrumentation swirling around him is, as I said before, chaotic. It is bustling, it is busy, it is difficult to penetrate. There's something also mental and transcendent about all of it as well, hearing the band lose themselves in this very all-over-the-place performance. In fact, I feel like I'm listening to an old recording of a New York no-wave band from back in the day, just creating an absolute ruckus. But somehow somebody is singing on top of all with the charisma of an Elvis Presley. But again, there's something spiritual about it, like an Appalachian Christian sect that speaks in tongues and shakes snakes around. Appalachian Christians, No Wave, Elvis. That's the combo. That's what this sounds like.

But yeah, an excellent end to an album that, again, I feel like Geese did a great job of maintaining their appeal, maintaining that Geese magic that made them so attractive to begin with. But they really revamped their songwriting and performance style for this record in a way that sees them moving forward, trying something new, but also leaves me perplexed in terms of this album just doing so well socially out of the gate, because I don't know what the numbers are looking like on this album so far, but as far as winning hearts and minds, the band seems to have done that with this record pretty immediately, despite the fact that I don't think the songwriting or presentation of these tracks is nearly as catchy or accessible as anything from 3D Country. And yet there's so many people like that seem so enamored with this record.

And again, I can see why. But the fact that this album is doing so well and appealing to so many so immediately, to me, says that maybe palettes are expanding a little bit and people actually are looking for rock bands these days that rock and don't quite sound so calculated and segmented and planned out. Maybe listeners want more of a jam, a little bit more unpredictable, a bit more clutter and chaos in their rock music. Frankly, I think that's a cool thing, which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong 8 on this album.

Anthony Fantano, Geese, Forever.