When Geese dropped ‘Taxes’ in July because the lead single from Getting Killed, the Brooklyn band provided a promise: this is able to be totally different.
With the album now sitting on year-end best-of lists and the band wrapping triumphant hometown reveals on the Paramount, that promise feels remarkably fulfilled. Paste Journal calls it probably ‘probably the most inventive indie rock information of the 2020s.’
‘Taxes’ capabilities because the penultimate monitor on an album Uproxx calls ‘essentially the most 2025 album of 2025, the file that, by far, greatest captures how scary and chaotic issues appear proper now.’
The monitor proclaims itself with earthy hand percussion, a rhythmic basis that feels nearly ritualistic. Max Bassin’s drumming builds with affected person confidence, refusing to settle into predictable buildings.
The Lyrical Structure
Cameron Winter’s opening admission strikes instantly: ‘I ought to burn in hell / I ought to burn in hell / However I don’t deserve this / No one deserves this.’
It’s a outstanding place to begin, acknowledging guilt while concurrently rejecting punishment. (Learn the full lyrics on Genius)
The biblical imagery isn’t ornament. When Winter sings, ‘In order for you me to pay my taxes / You’d higher come over with a crucifix / You’re gonna need to nail me down,’ he’s invoking Christ’s crucifixion, positioning himself as somebody who’d somewhat face martyrdom than adjust to damaged methods.
The tax collector turns into any entity demanding sacrifice with out consent, literal financial taxes or the broader emotional levies fashionable existence extracts.
‘Physician, physician, heal your self’ precedes Winter’s most devastating promise: ‘I’ll break my very own coronary heart any more.’
It’s a declaration of independence from exterior validation, a dedication to self-destruction on one’s personal phrases.
Sonic Evolution
The manufacturing, dealt with by Geese alongside Kenny Beats, begins in near-minimalism earlier than the inevitable eruption.
Emily Inexperienced’s guitar work demonstrates admirable endurance, offering refined color till the midpoint transformation.
The shift feels seismic: the combo opens from near-mono into full stereo width, guitars cascading while the rhythm part locks right into a groove that feels each celebratory and apocalyptic.
Winter’s voice has at all times divided listeners, however right here it feels grounded in new methods. The affect of his 2024 solo album Heavy Steel is clear in his restraint. The distinctive warble stays, however it’s deployed with goal somewhat than extra.
The Divisive Factor
Honesty requires acknowledging what gained’t land for each listener. Winter’s vocal supply operates as Geese’s most polarising factor, both the exact device the songs require or an impediment to having fun with genuinely compelling instrumental work.
The timbre itself divides opinion, however the actual friction emerges from how prominently the vocals sit within the combine.
Geese constructs remarkably layered preparations, take heed to how Inexperienced’s guitar interacts with Bassin’s drums all through ‘Taxes,’ the refined harmonic shifts beneath the floor.
But Winter’s voice dominates the stereo discipline in methods that may obscure these particulars.
For listeners who prioritise instrumental dynamics and prolonged passages the place musicians can breathe with out vocal presence, this presents a real barrier.
The monitor’s climactic second-half transformation proves significantly contentious. The shift from restrained stress to full-band eruption represents precisely what Geese do greatest: managed chaos that feels earned somewhat than imposed.
But when Winter’s vocal method doesn’t join with you, that complete payoff loses affect. The explosion turns into noise somewhat than catharsis.
The songs preserve vocal presence all through, denying listeners the prospect to focus purely on what the rhythm part and guitars accomplish.
For individuals who view lyrics as complementary somewhat than central, who consider nice instrumentation ought to carry a monitor no matter what’s being sung, this fixed vocal foregrounding can really feel suffocating.
It’s not a flaw in Geese’s method. It’s merely music designed for listeners who join with Winter’s supply, which suggests it inherently excludes those that don’t.
The Visible Descent
Director Noel Paul’s music video operates as a visible thesis on viewers, efficiency, and the violence beneath collective euphoria. It opens with a handheld digital camera pushing by way of a packed venue, capturing Geese performing with near-dispassionate precision.
Then the transformation. The digital camera switches to undercranked movie, creating footage that strikes with unnatural velocity.
As Paul defined in an interview, the inspiration got here from medieval work of damned souls and Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro torture depictions.
The undercranking emphasises vibe over reference, letting imagery register emotionally somewhat than intellectually.
The group begins to convulse. Live performance euphoria curdles into one thing darker. Viewers members assault one another, the violence escalating till they’re actually consuming each other.
The visible reference to Goya’s ‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ interprets the portray’s uncooked horror right into a thesis about crowds, consumption, and the skinny line between celebration and carnage.
Inside Getting Killed
Launched 26 September through Partisan Data, Getting Killed represents precisely what ‘Taxes’ promised: Geese discovering confidence of their idiosyncrasies while tightening compositional focus.
Crucial reception has been overwhelming. NME proclaimed the band ‘on the verge of correct cult superstardom,’ while The Line of Finest Match known as it ‘the type of album that makes you rethink the final album you thought-about nice.’
Offended Steel Man famous how ‘noisier tracks transfer seamlessly into the extra melodic,’ pointing to the transition from ‘Bow Down’ to the ‘explosive Taxes’ as proof of intentionality behind the album’s managed chaos.
12 months-Finish Recognition
Pitchfork ranked ‘Taxes’ the tenth greatest music of 2025, noting the way it ‘stalks and sways on hole, death-rattling drums and is reborn at its coda, exploding right into a raucous pop melody.’
The band’s latest Brooklyn Paramount reveals showcased how the monitor has advanced stay. What works on file as a fastidiously constructed three-minute assertion turns into one thing looser, extra harmful in efficiency.
Launched in July throughout escalating debates over authorities spending, ‘Taxes’ gained extra weight as autumn introduced extra battle over the place collective assets truly go.
Why It Endures
12 months-end retrospectives place Getting Killed amongst 2025’s important releases. ‘Taxes’ stands because the monitor that greatest captures what critics establish because the album’s central achievement: modern chaos with out being consumed by it.
Songs like this give voice to systemic frustration with out providing false options.
The metaphor proves remarkably elastic. ‘Taxes’ can imply financial obligation, emotional labour, surrendered dignity, or the numerous methods fashionable existence extracts cost.
This universality explains why listeners maintain connecting with a music that shouldn’t work: a monitor about resistance invoking crucifixion imagery and climaxing with a promise of deliberate heartbreak.
The Verdict
‘Taxes’ succeeds as a thesis assertion that proved correct. The monitor promised an album that may belief its viewers with out pandering. Getting Killed delivered, incomes year-end listing placements and important declarations that Geese have change into certainly one of modern rock’s important acts.
The monitor stands as certainly one of 2025’s most compelling rock releases exactly as a result of it refuses consolation. It acknowledges hell, questions whether or not we deserve it, then chooses defiance over acceptance.
Winter’s promise to interrupt his personal coronary heart resonates as a result of it’s each deeply private and universally relatable.
Self-inflicted ache generally feels preferable to ready for the inevitable exterior blow. ‘Taxes’ voices that impulse with out romanticising it.
The music marks a turning level in Geese’s evolution from promising post-punk upstarts to certainly one of modern rock’s most necessary voices.
That is the sound of a band that discovered its voice by way of confidence, not compromise, by way of understanding which issues matter.
Geese delivered one thing uncommon: a music that met 2025’s second with out being consumed by it.
As retrospectives solidify Getting Killed amongst the yr’s important releases, ‘Taxes’ stands because the defiant requiem that introduced Geese had totally realised their promise.
The monitor stays a three-minute burst of managed chaos, proof that rock music doesn’t want saving, simply bands prepared to play it with this a lot conviction.
