A few weeks ago, I proclaimed Geese frontman Cameron Winter “a musical genius,” rhapsodizing about his amazing solo album “Heavy Metal.” At the time, I was confident that no one could release a better record this year. I fear I may have made a fool of myself by entertaining this notion — I should have anticipated that Winter’s next project, the new Geese album “Getting Killed,” would be just as revelatory as “Heavy Metal.”
Geese have released two other albums to date, discounting one that they recorded in high school and have since disavowed: the relatively straightforward post-punk “Projector” and the innovative “3D Country.” “Getting Killed” feels like a fusion of “3D Country” and “Heavy Metal,” combining the Geese album’s noisy, classic rock-inflected sound with the tremulous transcendence of Winter’s solo record. It’s a natural and stunning evolution of the band’s artistry, combining every influence under the sun into a novel melange.
“Getting Killed” is a truly evil-sounding album. Menacing bass lines mesh with omnipresent, rhythmic percussion and bursts of tightly controlled but bracing noise. Despite the screeching noises that skitter over the surface of the songs, each one is grounded in a rock-solid groove. The entire time I was listening to the album, I was caught between a compulsive need to dance and a paralytic anxiety engendered by both music and lyrics.
Winter dedicates the album’s 12 songs to narrating paranoia, insanity and violence. He wails, “there’s a bomb in my car,” worries about the “microphones under the bed” and seems terrified by his inability to identify the exact number of horses on the dancing floor: “maybe 124,” he ventures, but who knows?
Later in the same song, “100 Horses,” Winter delivers the album’s manifesto: “There is only dance music in times of war.” Today is one of the most insane times to be alive in recent memory, and Geese have tapped into the uneasy atmosphere of 2025 to make 12 of the finest examples of wartime dance music I’ve ever heard.
The best song on the album, without a doubt, is “Bow Down.” It’s all gas, no brakes, barreling forwards like a racehorse on its way to the dancing floor as Winter chants “you don’t know what it’s like to bow down, down, down.” Dominic DiGesu’s bass line is one of my favorites in recent years.
Lead single “Taxes” is another standout, a slowly building track that reaches a fever pitch when Winter directs his tirade at the taxman. “If you want me to pay my taxes,” he taunts, “you’d better come over with a crucifix, you’re gonna have to nail me down.” As was the case on “Heavy Metal,” his raw sincerity is alternately wryly humorous and emotionally engrossing — ”nobody knows where they’re going,” he repeats at the beginning of “Long Island City Here I Come,” before smugly adding “except me.”
That earnestness is brutal when applied to the heavy topics that “Getting Killed” focuses on. Where “3D Country” was highly conceptual and “Heavy Metal” felt akin to a collection of personal vignettes, “Getting Killed” finds Geese railing against the violence and terrifying uncertainty that define contemporary life.
The cacophony that Winter and his bandmates conjure isn’t directionless; it’s a full-throated response to the rage-inducing surrealism of living in a world simultaneously defined by asinine political theater and gut-wrenchingly immediate images of ungodly carnage. “Getting Killed” fuses these twin agonies — it’s dance music that never lets you forget for a second that there’s a war, or two, or maybe 124, going on.
