Gorillaz fans were able to embark on a spiritual adventure through their ninth studio album, “The Mountain.” The album includes 15 tracks, 24 artists and collaborators and a fully animated, 8-minute short film.
The Gorillaz are a virtual band created by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett back in 1998. 2-D, Murdoc Niccals, Noodle and Russel Hobbs are the four fictional members of the band, and their universe has been built up through music videos, interviews, comic strips and cartoon shorts.
According to a “Q with Tom Power” interview with Albarn and Hewlett, the album was inspired by their experiences on their visits to India and their fathers’ deaths, who died ten days apart. The new album takes on themes related to the celebration of life and exploring the journey between life and death.
“It's a mountain, and there are a lot of kinds of deities inspired by time spent in India and the frequency within Hinduism of encounters with deities for every sort of human condition,” Albarn said during the interview with Q with Tom Power. “We’ve added gods of our own, based on our imagination, and (the Gorillaz) have quite a lot to say on the record.”
Before the band even teased the album, it held a one-night “mystery show” in London’s Copper Box Arena on Sep. 3, 2025. According to an article from NME, fans were not allowed to bring their phones inside, 10 of the songs were performed and the album was announced.
“The soundscape of this album is like nothing I've ever heard from this band; it's absolutely breathtaking,” wrote chaosctrl, a user on X, after seeing the show. “There is a track that had me sobbing 10 seconds in. Almost perfect album. Gorillaz really outdid themselves with this one.”
A large number of the collaborators on this album are from India or of Indian descent. Some notable names include international flautist Ajay Prasanna, musicians Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash, singer Anoushka Shankar, playback singer Asha Bhosle and singer-songwriter Asha Puthli.
During an interview with The Associated Press, Hewlett said they figured out how to collaborate and execute the conversations within their songs by hanging out with the artists.
“We've always sort of seen the collaboration as a true journey into someone's individual life and law, we embrace that within the song,” Albarn said. “So, they're all different.”
This strong cultural influence can be felt when listening to the opening track “The Mountain,” which is almost fully instrumental until Albarn starts repeating the song and album cover. Throughout it, a conglomeration of sounds from a bansuri, a sitar, guitars and percussion instruments come together to create a spiritual feeling.
This song is also the first song featured in the cartoon short created for the album. Throughout the song, a younger version of Noodle explores an Indian-inspired landscape, but after swimming into a lake grows up to her adult self. At the end, the rest of the band shows up and begins to take their trek up a mountain.
Hewlett told AP the cartoon was intentionally made to resemble the style of the 1960s because of the rise of artificial intelligence.
“With the rise of AI art and AI this and AI that, I find it all a bit sickening really, and I've already had enough of it,” Hewlett said. “It was necessary to show how wonderful something can look when it's made by people, and that's what we attempted to do. Hopefully, it will be liked.”
The next song in the cartoon and album, “The Moon Cave,” tackles themes of emotional vulnerability and fear of abandonment with more chill, hip-hop beats.
In the video, the band is depicted exploring different parts of the previous land. Some notable events include 2-D trying to buy snake oil, Niccals seducing a snake and Noodle riding Hobbs as a raft.
During the middle of the album, the songs take on themes of disillusionment and destabilization through tracks like “The Happy Dictator,” “The God of Lying,” “Delirum” and “Damascus.” The melody of these tracks embodies the themes they are about.
“The Hardest Thing” and “Orange County” are designed to tackle the grief both creators have been feeling and flow into each other. The first song crafts the feeling of experiencing a tough moment in one's life through trumpets, while the latter takes on a more upbeat sound. Both songs share similar lyrics.
The album also features a multitude of languages, English, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish and Yoruba, in the songs “The Manifesto,” “Damascus” and “The Shadowy Light.”
In addition, some of the songs in the second half take a slower, sentimental beat. “The Empty Dream Machine,” “The Plastic Guru,” “Casa Blanca” and “The Sweet Prince” tackle themes like feeling trapped, one's mind being at war and tension.
The album’s final song and the cartoon, “The Sad God,” act as a peaceful, melancholic end. The song is about how the beauty of humanity was twisted into spiritual emptiness. The cartoon also reflects this theme by having the band’s members plunge themselves into a completely black lake during the song.
The Gorillaz conquered the album’s ambitious and unique undertaking, showing fans a culturally rich meditation on life, death and humanity.
Rating: 7/10
