It’s been 25 years since Gorillaz first turned the cartoon-band idea into one of pop’s most flexible formats, and The Mountain arrives in 2026 sounding like a group that still knows how to make scale feel exciting. What I kept coming back to, though, wasn’t just the size of it. It was the question of whether all that detail actually gives the songs more weight. This is a 15-track record shaped by loss, reflection, collaboration, and Indian musical influence, and for long stretches it’s impressive on sheer construction alone. But I also think the criticism is fair: some of these tracks are more memorable as parts of the album’s frame than as songs you’ll immediately pull out and replay.
How Gorillaz builds the frame
That frame is the whole point here. Gorillaz has always worked best when Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett treat the project like a moving target instead of a fixed band, and The Mountain leans hard into that approach. The India-inspired angle gives the record a distinct identity without making it feel like a travelogue or a costume change. The title track, “The Mountain,” makes that clear early. Its opening feels patient and ceremonial, and by the time the groove settles in, the song is doing what this album does better than almost any Gorillaz release since Plastic Beach: stacking texture until the track feels expensive without collapsing under it. Around the first minute, when the arrangement widens and the rhythm locks into place, you can hear the appeal of the whole project. It’s dense, glossy, and carefully staged.
That approach carries into “The Beginning of the End,” which works less like a big single than a table-setter for the album’s themes of death and reflection. What stands out to me is how restrained it is. Instead of chasing a huge chorus right away, it lets the production do the heavy lifting, and that’s both a strength and a warning sign for what follows. You hear the collaborative mindset everywhere on this record, and while the research around the album keeps stressing that breadth, the real achievement is that it rarely feels random.
When the songs actually cut through
The tracks that land best are the ones where the polish serves a clear melodic or emotional idea. “The Manifesto” is the obvious example. Pitchfork called it a fine pop song, and that undersells it a little to my ear. It’s one of the few moments here that feels instantly legible without losing the album’s scale. There’s a snap to it that some of the later material could use more of. “The Happy Dictator” also helps early on because it brings a little bite to the record’s otherwise stately pace. Even without over-reading the arrangement, you can hear Gorillaz tightening the screws there rather than just adding another layer.
The closing stretch is where The Mountain makes its strongest case. “Casablanca,” “The Sweet Prince,” and “The Sad God” are the songs that justify the album’s reach. “Casablanca” has the reflective tone a lot of this record aims for, but it gets there with more definition. “The Sweet Prince” feels similarly focused, less interested in broad statement than in mood and shape. Then “The Sad God” gives the ending a sense of return, which matters on an album this long. This is where comparisons to Demon Days and Plastic Beach make sense to me, not as rankings, but as examples of Gorillaz knowing how to turn a large concept into a sequence that actually sticks.
Where the polish starts to outrun the payoff
The weak spot is pretty simple: for all its craft, the album can start to blur. A few reviews have pointed to generalized writing, and I think that lands. Gorillaz has always been able to get away with broad lines when the hooks are sharp or the production swerves hard enough to compensate. Here, the writing sometimes reaches for big, humane statements and settles for something closer to summary. That doesn’t ruin the record, but it does flatten parts of the middle stretch.
The other issue is repetition. Not repetition in the catchy, pop sense, but in the way the album keeps returning to similarly ornate solutions. By the time you move deeper into tracks like “The Man Who Left the World,” “The Sadness of Icarus,” and “The Silent Forest,” the record’s richness can start to feel like its default setting. That’s the tradeoff with an album this carefully polished. The surfaces stay attractive, but the song shapes don’t always separate from each other. For a band with Gorillaz’s history of obvious entry points, that matters. One recurring complaint in the reception to this album is that major standout cuts are harder to identify than they were on older records, and I can hear why.
The final take
I still think The Mountain earns its reputation as a strong late-career Gorillaz release. The 2026 timing matters because this doesn’t sound like a band running a victory lap. It sounds like Albarn and Hewlett’s project still testing how much weight the Gorillaz format can hold: grief, global reach, a broad cast of collaborators, and a 15-song runtime that risks excess more often than caution. Not every track lands with the same force, and I wouldn’t pretend the album is packed with immediate all-timers. But when it clicks, especially on “The Manifesto,” “Casablanca,” “The Sweet Prince,” and “The Sad God,” it reminds you how good Gorillaz can be at making pop feel large without turning vague. I’d put it below the very best of Demon Days, but it’s the most convincing this project has sounded in a while.
If you’ve got any affection for late-period Gorillaz records that aim big and occasionally overreach, give it a listen.
Tracklist
- The Mountain
- The Beginning of the End
- The Happy Dictator
- The Hardest Thing
- Ghost Train
- Something in the Water
- The Man Who Left the World
- The Sadness of Icarus
- The Nice and the Naughty
- The Last Chariot
- The Time of Our Lives
- The River
- The Silent Forest
- The Burning Sun
- The End of the Mountain
