By:
Ernesto Aguilar
Album Type: EP
Date Released: 15/12/2017
Label: Magnetic Eye Records
The
band returns with its second offering of 2017, and it gets back in the mud with
this ridiculously catchy EP. It will leave
fans wanting but "The Bottom" closes out the year for Ghastly Sound
in grand style.
“The Bottom”
DD track listing
1.
Waves
2.
The Bottom
3.
Holy Serpent
4.
Deadtooth
5.
Sink
The Review:
In
February, Vermont sludge metal trio Ghastly Sound offered
their self-titled debut to big fanfare. The band, composed of just a bass, drum
and vocal, generated buzz for its metal roots that integrate hardcore, noise
and dashes of dream-pop into the songs. And when a follow-up was announced,
hype for the young band was building.
Besides
recording, it's been a busy few months for the three-piece. Over the summer, Ghastly Sound bassist T. J, Maynard gained viral notoriety
for outing white supremacist Ryan Roy to his Vermont employer. Roy, part of the
white power metal band Hate Speech, was among
hundreds of participants in Unite the Right protests in Charlottesville, which
resulted in the death of a protester and a national outcry. In an interview
after Roy's termination, Maynard said, "“They
didn’t fire him because he went to the rally or exercised his right to freedom
of speech. They fired him because when the community saw that he was there they
told his employer that they would lose business if they kept him around. It was
that free market conservatives love to tout at its best."
Regardless
of where you fall on the political spectrum, in addition to liking the music,
you might want to give points for being willing to call folks out.
Ghastly Sound's members
didn't let the media attention go to their heads, clearly. The band returns
with its second offering of 2017, and it gets back in the mud for clanking, yet
ridiculously catchy, metal on "The
Bottom."
What
makes Ghastly Sound such an intriguing group in
the metal ecosystem is how fluidly it incorporates inspirations into a sound
that is squarely hard rock/metal in breeding. Not having a guitarist makes the
trio far more innovative than a lot of bands, and vocalist Tyler Gurwicz is
versatile enough to hit a range of notes and emotions with his singing. "Waves," its opener, hooks you with
both melodies and driving volume. It's a rollicking cut, where Gurwicz goes
from shouts to soaring vocals over its two minutes and change. On the title
track, Maynard and drummer Ryan Lewis provide a charging backdrop for Gurwicz
to flex his diverse approach.
Ghastly Sound count bands
like Unsane and Torche
among its influences, and those among others are flags flown high on songs like
"Deadtooth." Additionally,
Ghastly Sound's aesthetic very strongly merges touches of
more mainstream music with metal. Acts from Word Alive,
Myrkur and The Devil Wears Prada
have created releases in not dissimilar ways, to both love and hate. And while Ghastly Sound is unlike all of them, the Vermont team's
savvy feels familiar, in a good way. Lastly, you might expect a song named
"Holy Serpent" or
something else might explicitly address the Roy incident, or white power bands,
but it doesn't, at least directly.
By
the time you finish the EP, your main complaint may well be that "The Bottom," at just over 15
minutes, is simply too short. Perhaps it is better to leave fans wanting more
than wanting less. Regardless, "The
Bottom" closes out the year for Ghastly Sound in grand style.
The
title track from “The Bottom" is
streaming in full below and the EP available to pre order/buy here
and via bandcamp here
