vote
7.0
- Band:
Ghost Bath - Duration: 00:36:35
- Available since: 09/05/2025
- Label:
-
Nuclear blast
Streaming not yet available
The Ghost Bath parable has been stalled for a few years, when we have our meeting with the fifth album “Rose Thorn Necklace”. Far the times of Chinese fiction, when they accreditated as they come from a megalopolis of that country and did not give certain news about them. The unveiling of their identities and their location in a much less exotic city of North Dakota has somehow evaporated the magic, the one that had decreed the underground success of the first two albums: first “Funeral”, then the decidedly Deafheaveaveaveaven-Oriented “Moonlover” had attracted several attention on the band, then arrived with the third album “Starmourner” with an important contract with an important contract with an important contract with an important contract with an important contract Nuclear Blast. From there, despite the fact that the group started to have regular live activity and gained a less wave sound location, something on a creative level seems to have jammed.
Let's say that probably the appreciation, or the criticisms, against them are due to the expectations aroused by the first works, only to attend an increase and a lack of further momentum. So that today we would hardly be able to put the four Americans on the same level with the deeds of the aforementioned Deafheaveaven, or by Harakiri for the Sky and, widening the boundaries a little, masters of melancholy in music such as Alcest. Having said that, although the latest album “Self Loather” was the most interlocutory of their discography, the quality of writing had not gone totally to diminish, keeping at least for the most loyal fans and in general the followers of the so -called blackgaze.
Four years later, “Rose Thorn Necklace” gives some jolts and tries again to brush the brush of pink and sweet flavors the black metal 'plaintive' of ours, when “self -lourge” went to perceptibly reduce the cloth of shoegaze moods and depressive temptations. Then the bright colors and even a sense of caramelosity are back in the foreground to give some passages, due to a affection that alters perceptibly, scandalously would say the detractors, what originally should be black metal.
By appreciating the decision to maintain everything in a reasonable duration without filler – we are under forty minutes – the new album actually denotes a rather particular atmosphere, poised between diverted shoegaze panoramas and metal urgency. Convulsions Post-Black Metal tears, dubbed by the characteristic acute ululate of Mikula, alternate with extremely quiet phases, clinging to sugary and beete melodies, much more present than “self-loater”.
Despite the guitar vehemence and a rather rocky sound of this instrument, such as that of “Self Loater”, moreover, the most blessed and graceful tones emerge, thanks to an excellent use of arpeggiati, synthesizers and piano. In the general alchemy of today's Ghost Bath, the relevance of these ethereal and battered elements takes over, inexorably directing the general feeling of the disc. A song like “Well, the Tried Drowning” is therefore stimulating for this dosed ambivalence between wild anger and a delicate to let go. The toxic and sick vein of the depressive black metal is also oriented in the album for more rough and less smooth solutions, such as the brutal impetus of the articulated “Dandelion Tea”.
It is perceived that “Rose Thorn Necklace” is a felt and at the same time well -weighted album, set in the stylistic styles of the Ghost Baths, but crossed by a greater creative urgency compared to their previous studio exit. Some things may be a more stereotyped and less satisfying thread to listen (“Stamen and Pistil”), but above all when the keyboards are teased our ears with some bold embroidery (think of the vibrant phrasing and the electronics of “Vodka Butterfly”) the American formation shows that it still has its own touch for these sounds. Not a post-Black Metal masterpiece, yet “Rose Thorn Necklace” is gladly listened to, reporting pleasant familiarity with that metal glaze on behalf of Ghost Bath.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
