Chris Goss is one of the elusive geniuses of American music. As the singer, guitarist and driving force behind Masters Of Reality, he’s spent more than 40 years charting his own musical journey, travelling from mystical blues to desert rock to psychedelia-edged beauty via all points in between.
Where others follow the pack, this desert-dwelling California native has forged a career like no other. A desire to follow his own artistic muse and not bow to external pressures has resulted in a string of albums that sound like no one else but Masters Of Reality, subtly yet indelibly leaving a mark on the generations of musicians who heard them.
For most people, that would be enough. But Goss has also positioned himself as one of the most important and influential producers of the last 30 years. The list of bands and artists he has worked with in that capacity is long and illustrious: Queens Of The Stone Age, Kyuss, Mark Lanegan, Foo Fighters, The Cult, UNKLE, Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland, former Hole bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur, even Hollywood star Russell Crowe. He’s the connective tissue which links so much modern music.
Now, Goss has returned under the Masters Of Reality banner with The Archer, which will be released by Mascot Records on 28 March.
“The Archer is whoever one perceives as their invisible ruler of fate,” explains Goss. “Often, the archer is very visible to those who pay attention. Maybe some even think he is the dictatorial god. Or even a conjured entity. But all can agree that the archer has impeccable skill at hitting the target.”
When it was released in May 2024, Sugar was their first new music in 15 years. Hypnotic, poignant, and vulnerable, it builds from a stirring melody into a grand, orchestrated swell of emotion, with Goss’s ethereal yet soulful voice floating over the top of it. This announcement, along with a run of shows through Europe, which Goss refers to as “heavenly,” announced that they were back.
“Lots of the songs were pieces, chord progressions and small lyrical sequences that I had mulled around in my mind for years, sometimes decades,” reflects Goss on how the album came together.
The characters that occupy The Archer are the nameless and faceless people that one sees at times or regularly observes driving on whatever road we’re both on briefly. “Everyone has a story. And their own story is the most important thing in the world to them,” he says. “No one is special. Everyone is heading towards, or actually in, their own ‘Gethsemane’ moment- a New Testament narrative that exemplifies the cold realization of one’s fate. Sweating blood is more common than most can imagine.”
Masters Of Reality was born in the white heat of the early 80s when the barriers between musical genres were porous enough to make things interesting. The New York City of the late 70s had been the young Chris Goss’s playground, splitting his time between downtown punk dives and uptown disco clubs.
That against-the-grain sensibility was embedded deep in the DNA of Masters Of Reality from their inception as a two-piece band in the early 1980s. In their original incarnation, they channelled Goss’s love of Black Sabbath, Kraftwerk and electro-punk provocateurs Suicide, combining heavy music with electronics years before the likes of Nine Inch Nails.
However, restlessness and endless curiosity pushed Goss and his band to undergo transformation after transformation. The electronics began to fall away, and the two-piece band became a four-piece. By the time of their self-titled 1989 debut album – produced by none other than Rick Rubin – they were a gothic-pyschedelic blues band travelling America’s strange highways. On 1992’s Sunrise On The Sufferbus, Goss teamed up with legendary ex-Cream drummer Ginger Baker for a freewheeling, free-spirited album that stood like an island amid the dourness and angst of the grunge scene.
There’s no surprise that Masters of Reality remains in a perpetual evolution. “This album intentionally broke away from the heavier riff rock that we dominated for over three decades,” he says. “I hope one can see Nina Simone just as powerful as a heavy blues force, in her emotion, rebellious attitude, raw presentation and not just Gothicized blues riffs.”
He continues. “The ‘stoner and desert rock’ riffing was a reason for Masters of Reality to break away on this record and present our blues in a different light for a minute. Blues isn’t a three-chord riff progression. It’s life itself. I can easily provide a thousand heavy riffs at the drop of a dime. But I dare any self-proclaimed heavy riff band to have the balls to throw the curve ball that we’ve thrown with this album.”
The slow-burning title-track was the most arduous lyrical task for Goss. “I changed single words for months to be able to encapsulate a life in free fall and not sound like a self-pitying jerk,” he explains. “But what frees my aesthetic approach is once again sharing the prayer with everyone in this church of life. If there is anyone of any worth not climbing the walls in dreaded anticipation of bloody mayhem, I’d like to meet them.”
“It All Comes Back to You,” with its Karmic retribution ponderings, comes at a time when the personal perception of purpose has been twisted into a large mass of unrecognizable brainwashed self-portraits. “It was a touchy tightrope to walk. A laughable analysis trap. But saved by a simple resolve, I think,” he says. “It actually does all come back to you. Nothing new here; You reap what you sow.”
“Mr Tap n Go” is a bloodthirsty vaudevillian dancing monster entertaining the planet with a syringe in one hand and a child in the other. “The unauthorized veterinarian trying to scramble all of us animals into sick acceptable submission. And he remains invisible to a large portion of the zombified walking corpses left in the world,” he says.
His intuitive sense for music that was both ground-breaking and visceral led him to a bunch of kids from Palm Desert called Kyuss, who played heavy music with a transcendental edge. Goss worked with the band on three landmark albums in the early 1990s, helping plant the seeds for the so-called desert rock movement that would flower throughout the rest of the decade, while Goss himself was held up as ‘The Godfather Of Desert Rock.’
One near miss was Nirvana – Dave Grohl told him that the grunge band had considered Goss as a producer for the follow-up to Nevermind. “They used to listen to Masters Of Reality and Kyuss in their van,” says Goss. “But I would have wanted to fuck their sound up.”
While Goss focussed on production work, Masters Of Reality largely went dark. When the band finally returned in 1999, it was with the magisterial Welcome To The Western Lodge, a record that channelled a disillusion with the music industry and the culture around it into 13 songs that pulsed with a beautiful bleakness.
Three more studio albums have been released under the Masters Of Reality name: 2001’s Deep In The Hole, 2004’s Give Us Barabbas, and 2009’s Pine/Cross Dover. Each was a self-contained musical universe, reaffirming Masters Of Reality as a band outside of the mainstream music industry.
Now, 16 years after his last release under the name, Chris Goss has finally returned with Masters Of Reality. Like everything they’ve released since their inception over 40 years ago, it’s another step on a journey that has continuously moved forward, never repeating itself or being swayed by external influences.
The arrival of The Archer —produced by Goss and featuring guitarist Alain Johannes, drummer John Leamy, and bassist Paul Powell—heralds the welcome return of Masters Of Reality.
In April 2025, Masters of Reality will head back out on tour after the massive success of the 2024 run. “The reception and love that was given to us was actually stunning,” he remembers. “I could have stayed in that nightly performance bliss forever, neurological complications and all. Music has always healed me, and that tour was worth a thousand doctors.”
Future-facing, Goss is going to take 2025 with both hands. “The challenge of creating the dynamic range of the new music is a bit daunting at the moment because we haven’t done these songs live yet. But I believe once we’re in rehearsals with a bit of sweat, we’ll have a blast. A weird, sometimes melancholic blast but that’s what the blues is; Laughing at both the devil and our own human folly at the same time.”
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Hallo, ich bin Maya.
