Review: Gorillaz — The Mountain
Music
Gorillaz
The Mountain
Kong
Street: 02.27.2026
Gorillaz = Avalanches + Bee Gees ^ Plastic Beach
Indian spirituality coexisting with pop, hip-hop and genre-bending disco isn’t a mix anyone was expecting to work, but The Mountain pulls it off. Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett created an album that weaves sorrow and hope together through layers of sitar, bansuri and classic Gorillaz funk. The record balances pulsing bass and disco rhythms with drifting flutes that are always in motion. Grief is palpable in each song, as is joy. It’s something to dance to with tears in your eyes.
According to details that spread during the announcement, Hewlett and Albarn lost their fathers within 10 days of each other. The focal point here is the transformation from life to death; the mountain is perhaps the place between. This is best heard through the voices of artists long gone in the many posthumous features that haunt the record. Mark E. Smith’s hyena-like delivery in “Delirium” would be at home in a ‘70s dance club, while Tony Allen’s presence in “The Hardest Thing” acts as a meditative prelude to “Orange County.” Proof’s bars were a pleasant surprise on “The Manifesto” for those who are fans of hip-hop. These features were weightier than mere dips into the archives – on an album focused on life and death, they sound like a reunion. The album is a party of ghosts and the living, when worlds overlap and time doesn’t matter.
The whole work is cohesive and blends together thematically and musically. There is a generous number of layers from voices all across the world, paired with diverse instrumentation. Each song is rewarding to listen to more than once, keeping discovery intact. One pass through, you catch sitar; the next, you hear light bells that sound like something heard in ceremony. Songs like “The Mountain” and “The Shadowy Light” create a slow uplifting trance while “The Happy Dictator” detours into something brighter – just don’t listen to the lyrics too carefully if you want to keep it that way.
Here are a few tracks to highlight on your journey up The Mountain: if you only had time in your hurried life to listen to a few of them, choose “Orange County,” “The Shadowy Light,” and “The Sad God.” “Orange County” sets grief against a light, whistled melody as Albarn sings, “It’s the hardest thing to say goodbye to someone you love.” “The Shadowy Light” bubbles up the existential absurdity of life into the everyday through Hindi lyrics. It’s as if the Wheel of Samsara itself were distilled into music through ascending scales and a mature acceptance of the journey. “The Sad God” isn’t for the faint of heart; Albarn takes a God’s-eye view of humanity (“I gave you atoms, / you built a bomb,”) nested into an unsuspecting mix of smooth melody, snare, boom-bap, sitar and Black Thought’s lyrical verse.
Compared to past work such as Demon Days, Plastic Beach or Song Machine, this album is less immediately accessible. It leans heavily into sounds that are unfamiliar and may repel some listeners. It retains all the signature auditory essence of Gorillaz: 2-D’s (Albarn’s) distant vocals that float over unpredictable, constantly shifting production.
No Gorillaz album would be complete without Hewlett’s art, a vast cacophony showing 2-D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russell journeying across India. A huge bonus is seeing Murdoc as a yogi – perhaps our twisted band member has finally found peace. Hewlett swings for the fences with his bright array of deities surrounding our familiar cast, cascading in yellows and reds. I’m not sure what song the elephant ass correlates with, but that was a standout from his The Mountain artwork. The visuals mirror the album’s sonic maximalism: saturated colors tracing characters through surreal landscapes that feel earthly and seraphic. Hewlett is reportedly working on a classically animated companion film for the album, and if the music is any indication, it will be worth paying attention to. —Jacob Kay
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