Passion of metal gets these Goats

The Mountain Goats. Photo / Supplied

You probably wouldn't pick it from the Mountain Goats' lively and odd folk music, but band leader John Darnielle is a devout follower, and somewhat of an expert on metal.

To be fair, he devours all sorts of music - from "instrumental acoustic music" to industrial dance - but metal holds a special place in his heart. In fact, it was Heart - not particularly metal, but outrageous 70s arena rock nonetheless - who was his first favourite band.

"I thought Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin were okay, but Heart was my favourite band," he chuckles. "When I was 16 I listened to Iron Maiden and AC/DC records and they sounded good to me. I would suspect, a love of metal begins with the love of that distorted guitar with the mid-range scooped out. The visceral basic response to that crunch.

"And," he says keenly, "metal bands put out for their audiences, and that is so important to me; that if you are on a stage you have to love the audience. That's your bread and butter. If it wasn't for them you could be washing dishes and you deserve to be if you don't love them. What inspired me especially [were] the metal bands playing clubs during the first big wave of thrash.

"They were up there [saying], 'I'm glad to be here and I'm going to show you that I'm glad to be here'. That's love and that's inspired me tremendously and I've come to associate that with the music."

His expert knowledge of the metal genre, not to mention his intriguing writing style, is highlighted in his first book Black Sabbath: Master of Reality, about the band's 1971 LP which was published this year as part of the 33 1/3 series of books about seminal albums.

Musically the heavy and slightly disturbing Lovecraft In Brooklyn, off the Mountain Goats' latest album, Heretic Pride, is probably the most metal the band has sounded since Darnielle started recording music in the early 90s.

"I'm just sad we can't bring some more musicians down to play it," he says of his shows at the Kings Arms on December 17 and the San Francisco Bath House in Wellington the day after.

The Mountain Goats, also including bass player Peter Hughes and drummer Jon Wurster (from noisy American indie band Superchunk), were meant to come earlier this year but had to cancel because of illness.

The Lovecraft song was inspired by controversial American author Howard Lovecraft.

"The one defence people launch of Lovecraft is that he's not a racist, he just hates human beings. But of course if you hate human beings you hate the individual races also," Darnielle says.