Good Tiger – ‘A Head Full Of Moonlight’ [Review]

Good Tiger A Head Full Of Moonlight Album Review Interview 2016

The Safety Fire, Tesseract, Architects, and The Faceless would have made a great co-headlining tour a few years ago. Fast-forward many moons, an assortment of splits, and an Avengers-style assembly later, and Good Tiger have not merely emerged, but exploded into the metal world’s consciousness. Made up of former The Safety Fire guitarists Derya “Dez” Nagle and Joaquin “Jo” Ardiles; ex-Tesseract vocalist Elliot Coleman; drummer Alex Rüdinger, previously of The Faceless; and one-time Architects touring guitarist Morgan Sinclair on bass, Good Tiger crowdfunded A Head Full Of Moonlight to the tune of almost $48,000 last year.

Listening to A Head Full Of Moonlight, it’s clear that Good Tiger’s fans were right to trust these guys. Good Tiger blur the boundaries between metal, rock, and pop throughout A Head Full Of Moonlight’s nine tracks, punching out everything from frantic palm-muted guitar melodies (Where Are The Birds; Enjoying the Rain) to jazz-ridden clean sections (Aspirations), supportive lyricism (Latchkey Kids), twisted love songs (All Her Own Teeth), and a perfectly understated and beautifully arranged ballad in Understanding Silence. There’s even a crushing prog-oriented tune to close things off: ’67 Pontiac Firebird, which sees Good Tiger unleash their heaviest chops over the course of five packed-full minutes.

Above all else, the Good Tiger team are great songwriters. Structurally, each song on A Head Full Of Moonlight is flawless, with not a note out of place. This album may have been written with live audiences in mind, but as a set of recordings in its own right, it holds up to repeated listens.

For me, A Head Full Of Moonlight’s overall highlight was, on first listen, the only song that made me cringe. I Paint What I See opens with lyrics you’d expect to hear on a Justin Bieber album (“Red is the colour of love…yellow is envy, or maybe it’s green…”), but quickly makes up for it by boasting an otherwise top-class lyrical performance topped off with an outro that brings Muse to mind. I Paint What I See is on-record proof that you shouldn’t judge a song by a couple of lines…like I did at first.

I’m sure plenty of people have already gone to town with twists on “Good Tiger” when talking about A Head Full Of Moonlight, so all that’s left to say is that you should try replacing the “Good” in “Good Tiger” with your own positive adjective of choice. Great Tiger, Nice Tiger, Awesome Tiger, Badass Tiger, Fantastic Tiger…maybe Sick Tiger doesn’t quite work, but oh well. Go nuts, and listen out for more; having recently signed with Metal Blade imprint Blacklight Media, the future’s looking appropriately bright for Good Tiger.

TMMP RATING: 91%

A Head Full Of Moonlight is out now. Follow Leon TK on Twitter here.

Posted on 27 March 2016

What do you think?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: