To say I was rather taken with my introduction to one-man project Gost with Possessor is putting it mildly. And the follow up Malediction was equally impressive; James Lollar had managed to craft a unique being from the cloth of black metal and the sounds of electronica from industrial chaos through EBM to darkwave. I missed the next album due to, well, Covid and was going to go back to it when this popped up and…now I’m not so sure. Why?
Things start off in true Gost style – ‘Judgement’ all rasping keyboards swirling, a sense of darkness immediately present. Spoken/sampled vocals buried in the noise. The Stars Spangled Banner, crowds… Then the thump of heavy as hell EBM as ‘Prophecy’ arrives. The drums become a machine gun rattle before the Ebm settles into something out of Excessive Force yearbook with deep bells intoning. And then it veers into strange, almost shapeless noise of harsh keyboards then melody then a pulsing soundtrack. Somewhere around this point I realise that this is surging towards the heavy end of the synthwave spectrum where Carpenter Brut currently dwell as majestic overlord. And that’s it. I am puzzled. In essence this is an instrumental but not a song or a track. This is far, far closer to a soundtrack (an area in which Gost have dabbled) but lacking the context.
‘Death In Bloom’ brings an old Ministerial sound with barked vocals halfway down the rhythm heavy beat. That old EBM sound takes the reins for a while, juddering and sparse and vocals distorted and again down in the mix. The melodic element is here between the machine gun beats, moments of holding its breath that weirdly remind me of Stabbing Westward back in the day before the utter cacophony breaks free (think first album Strapping Young Lad). This is a song, albeit it with unconventional structure, but once it’s in my lap I’m unsure what to do with it if I’m honest.
‘Deceiver’ dances with moments of pure synthwave and black metal vocals and a steady beat as it’s body and backbone. It has shape and momentum but again feels like a soundtrack to a film I’m missing. When it returns to the theme from the variation it is magnificent, building awe and dread in equal measure. And something clicks with me on ‘Obituary’; the little tapping at my brain was telling me Frontline Assembly before they went all industrial metal, Tactical Neural Implant times. Passages of music that are beautifully put together with rich production but seem somehow to be unable to present or subtly suggest context.
So I abandon all hope of that and try and fall into the music. And then they drop ‘Widow Song’ which is actually a song. A goddamned superb song. Choral vocals cut off by a dark dance rhythm, darkwave vocals half black metal half rough industrial and absolutely full of that incredible graps of melding genres and writing songs with not so much hooks and one deep, dark harpoon. Damn.
‘Golgotha’, ‘Digital Death’, ‘Shelter’ however all retreat back into the ‘is this a soundtrack?’ territory. Is this the point? ‘Through The Water’ though pushes itself back towards harsh, menacing noise and has much more of a shape of its own rather than trying to interpret a scene. ‘Leviathan’ ends with a rather fine synthwave instrumental. It has so many touches that remind me of Carpenter Brut, yes, but also some of the films that have used such music (for example Come True, directed by Anthony Scott Burns who also composed some of the music).
I don’t know. After multiple plays I’m still a bit bewildered and, yes, more than a bit disappointed. You can’t downplay the talent behind the music, and the production. In addition I can’t criticise it for not being something it was never intended to be. Just that I am no closer to knowing what it is. Apart from ‘Widow Song’ it sounds like the soundtrack to a film never completed, or a game never released; cuts of music designed to amplify certain images and apply more atmosphere beyond the pure visual, to hit that emotional response button. And with ‘Widow Song’ as the closing credits roll.
The music is fine, absolutely, but as an album I’m kind of floundering. I like difficult music and catchy stuff and all points in between. I have no problem with soundtracks or fully instrumental albums and definitely in love with dark ambient and the kind of noise that An Axis Of Perdition or Iskalde Morket craft. But somehow this feels like being partway through a mutation; moving from the days of songs towards pure if harsh ambient but not yet quite ready for the plunge.
If you’re a fan give it a listen (let’s be honest if you’re a fan you will anyway and rightly so) but it’s not an album to jump on the Gost train with I think.
(6.5/10 Gizmo)
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