Ghost is dead. How ironic
I know it's basically clickbait to
announce a band has one bad record and they're officially “DEAD,
NORMIE TRASH NEVER COME BACK REEEEEE”, but boy does this one hurt a
lot.
Ghost is (was?) one of the most unique
and fresh acts under the sun when they made their debut “Opus
Eponymous” way back in 2010. Their follow up, Infestissumam,
however, is a modern doom metal masterpiece. It still remains one of
the most approachable, catchy, yet haunting and unnerving metal
albums to date. Not to mention the band's theatrical flair gave them
a particular edge for bombastic and campy glory. (See: “Year Zero”)
Their third record is where things broke down a little. It's not a
bad record by any means, but the more dramatic and spooky elements
that gave the band their unique charm started to fade, leaving the
whole project a little stale for me, yet it still had some of the
most complex and angry material from the band to date. Then everyone
in the band quit (minus Papa the singer, a character in the band's
folklore who was later killed off. Yippie) to sue frontman Tobias
Forge and the band's future is now a bit of a mess. So now we've come
to Prequelle and yeah I guess a 'mess' is the only word I can use to
describe it.
'Prequelle' starts off in a
predictable, if effective way, with the intro track “Ashes”
featuring some children singing “ring around the rosy” in a
creepy way (really couldn't think of anything more original could
ya?) before launching into “Rats” a faster track then the band
normal puts together. I was and still am lukewarm on “Rats” as a
whole, but I can say now that it's... fine. It's a cohesive track
that's a little too repetitive for my taste, but at least tries to
maintain that creepy vibe from past records. “Faith” follows a
similar pattern to “Rats” with it's major difference being that
it's a little more aggressive.
From there, the record just kind of
meanders around. The album is just plain under cooked. Not
necessarily bad or lacking in good ideas, but so poorly fleshed out
and under written that I wonder if the album was even properly
finished before it was recorded and mastered. The most obvious
evidence of this is overall creepy vibe of the album being lost in
the murk. “Rats” and “Faith” barely touch on those creepy
theatrical glory of Infesissumam or the progressive/aggressive
attitude of Meliora. Which on principal is fine if 'Prequelle'
replaced them with something, anything! A track or two has a neat
idea, most notably the instrumental “Miasma” which ends with a
fantastic saxophone solo. But these ideas aren't woven in throughout
the album as a whole, they're just sort of thrown in. 'Prequelle' is
just nothing. It's basic chord progressions, basic writing, basic
solos... I'm bored of this sentence.
I know this review is short (not to
mention late to the game) but I just can't find anything else to
really say about Prequelle. It's short, it's boring and it's really
fucking underwhelming. I couldn't bring myself to even get annoyed by
it. Not since Celtic Frosts' “Cold Lake” has an album so
inoffensive and unremarkable came from an act that is supposed to be
unique and weird. I struggled all week to come up with something
positive to say about it, and the only thing that comes to mind is
“maybe the next one won't be so bad?”
5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment
Spam will be Deleted.