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The Ghost Of A Thousand - New Hopes, New Demonstrations

Album Reviews

Hardcore has quite a bad reputation these days.

Hardcore has quite a bad reputation these days. People like Converge, Pig Destroyer and Dillinger Escape Plan are exempt from being tarred by that brush for the sole reason they're all damn amazing. But the genre has in recent years been dragged down by a few too many bands with names like I Drenched Her In Blood and Hung From The Coathanger playing slightly faster metalcore and being branded as hardcore. Unfortunately this leaves bands like Brighton's Ghost Of A Thousand in a rather bad place, never being able to be classed in the same league as the aformentioned legends, but a damn sight better than the thousands of bands stranded on hardcore's sinking ship.

On Ghost Of A Thousand's second album, 'New Hopes, New Demonstrations', the band still seek to smash through the walls that can hold in music like theirs. Yes, this album is indeed very ferocious, packed with rolling drum beats and insane screams from very talented vocalist Tom Lacey, but in all the album seems like it doesn't quite achieve the stand-out attitude of their debut album, and seems a whole lot more average unfortunately.

There are moments of brilliance though, such as the truly Converge-esque opening to 'Neptune', roaring through speakers and tearing the listener fresh holes in their head before easing into a fantastic clean-vocalled melody. Similarly other moments when Ghost let out their true guttural anger they can come out fighting harder and faster than most other bands in their genre, like 'Running On Empty'.

But too often Ghost Of A Thousand's good intention, to develop as a band and become 'darker and atmospheric' falls flat on it's face. While a good idea in concept, in practise these segments of doom and gloom just don't work, and end up sounding rather awkward, as if it was just not the music the band should be playing.

For example, 'Small Mercies' can almost be compared to Mogwai at it's opening, before slowly morphing into a hazy wall of feedback. While this may sound fantastic, it is surrounded by raw hardcore songs, and instead of acting like a break for the listener, it jarrs the entire flow of the album. There are even some slower-tempo, very basic rock songs bogging down the record down like 'Split The Atom'. Once again this leaves the listener feeling a lot more confused than entertained, wondering what mood the band are trying to portray with this album.

So unfortunately the album, when listened in sequence, comes out as a muddled mess born from a band struggling to find a way out of their constricting genre (which, frustratingly, is what they do best, full on hardcore songs). However when listening to single songs on their own, this album could be considered great, but like most aggressive records, this is not something to be listened to for any extended time. Rating: 6/10