It's Not All Strepsil Sponsored Vocals...

It's summer, 1994.

A socially  awkward young metalhead who had just finished his first year in college was enjoying his first week away from the grind of coursework. The summer months meant a time of partying with a bunch of metalheads, hippies and stoners that took this guy under their wing when his best friend was more interested in the carnal pursuits of a girlfriend. It was a splinter group of early twenty-somethings, all living in a row of houses, meaning he could crash over and drink as much as he liked without grief from his parents.

His love for metal was stronger than ever, but it was confined more and more to the extreme side of the spectrum. He had bunked off college one day just to purchase Cannibal Corpse’s latest album The Bleeding, his college friends had lent him albums and recorded mix tapes from bands such as Death, At the Gates, Morbid Angel, Deicide - and there was a lot of fuss about a new up and coming band called Machine Head.

The ringleader of this troop of metalheads, stoners and hippies was a guy called Daz. He had an elaborate collection of vinyl that you could spend hours looking at, including classic rock from the likes of Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Budgie and Deep Purple, as well as thrash classics from Anthrax, Megadeth, Metallica and Testament. It would probably take days to play this collection if you played it back to back without sleep. This young metalhead loved what he heard, and this rag tag bunch of friends often had random adventures and barbecues, at one point shoe horning six people into a mk2 Ford Escort estate and driving for hours to anywhere random, usually somewhere scenic - because "Why not?"  (one of them had passed their driving test recently).

For the most part, this young metalhead liked what he heard but was still pretty much all about Strepsil sponsored vocals, and power chords., In fact, ‘the lads’ didn't really get what he saw fascinating about a new vinyl he bought from a band called Cradle of Filth, and a CD from a bunch of teenage Norwegians called Emperor. It was all set to change one Friday night, when this young metalhead called over with some beers to Daz’s gaff. He was having a natter about music, and brought up a pre-recorded tape of Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell for him to check out. This led neatly into playing an album from his collection that turned into a real game changer.

The vinyl was placed onto the platter of a late 1970s Pioneer music centre. Daz was an audiophile on a shoe string. He preferred these type of music centres or hi-fi separates as "They cared more about the engineering of record players. When they made CD players, they skimped on record players and they sounded like shit, you know?”. This young metalhead agreed, as his father managed a hi-fi and electronic shop and was surrounded by technology from an early age; CB radios, VHS recorders, Amateur Radio, all sorts of things - it was pretty much genetic.

The music centre whirred into life, and a ethereal sounding choir came from the speakers; which developed into piano, mandolin, which build to a crescendo of lead guitar solos. This young metalhead sat there, mouth open and rendered completely speechless.

“What the?....Fuck....man! What’s this album, Daz? This is amazing!”

“It’s Ommadawn by Mike Oldfield”

“What? Mike Oldfield? That dude that done the theme to that banned film? I thought he only done this and some cheesy crap that my Dad kept on playing when I was a kid on holidays to Wales in his Ford Cortina. Really?”

“Yep”

The album starts off with in an ethereal manner, with soaring choir vocals, mandolin, piano notes, and occasional electric guitar flourishes and a piano riff. The choir still holds steady with layered keyboard synth effects, only to be punctuated by a mournful mandolin solo adding further to the ethereal atmospheres.  A guitar solo slowly builds from the mix, gaining in volume with a crash of cymbals. Then, a louder guitar solo soars over the top. This develops into further territories marked by flutes and pipes, building further into a crescendo once more with a duelling banjo style jam incorporating a recorder, piano, mandolin and acoustic guitar that sounds compelling and bewitching. A gentle section containing harps, penny whistles and so forth develops into more lead guitar trade offs. This then develops into a mournful flute solo before developing into deep African style drumming and nonsensical chants of “ommadawn” like a compelling witch doctor dance, all becoming louder and louder with every layer of instruments playing full force and ending with ploy-rhythmic drumming patterns reminiscent of post coital heart beats.



The second side of the LP continues with searing slow electric guitars, acoustic guitars and synths but this time more mournful, continuing with the dense multiple layers of the previous side but developing into an arrangement largely dominated by what sound like wedding bells, but with a sea of many instruments. A flute solo then appears in the mix surrounded by slow acoustic guitar strums and multiple dizzying keyboard effects. This clears and fades, like the fading of rain to a quaint Gaelic folk ditty involving bagpipes, acoustic guitars and harp flourishes. This interlude ends with what myself and Daz called the “Feeling sorry for yourself bit”; an interlude that seems to be a prevalent pattern on what I eventually discovered was found on all of Mike Oldfield albums - a mournful flute solo that blossoms out into multi layered instrumentation with keyboards and soaring choir vocals. Then, it develops into a fun little hoe down of drums, acoustic guitar duelling, flutes, and more searing electric guitar work, developing in pace and loudness before ending almost abruptly.

Finally. the album ends with a surreal moment. The final track is acoustic guitar, electric guitar flourishes and flutes; with Mike talking about how he likes beer, cheese, a place called Hergest Ridge and riding upon horseback. The ‘song’ contains the nonsensical chorus of “Hey and away we go, through the grass across the snow, big brown beastie, big brown face, I’d rather be with you than flying though space”. Clearly something that he wrote on one of his more lysergic moments, perhaps consuming ‘those sort of mushrooms’.

From that point on, this young metalhead suddenly had his musical horizons expanded. The album was truly compelling, with complex sound structures with waves upon waves of different instruments added to the mix as the album went on. He had to know more of this sort of thing.

The following week, he had also discovered the joys of Ozric Tentacles - which one of the other lads brought along - and he quickly learnt of bands such as The Black Crowes, Steve Hillage, Gong, solo stuff from Pink Floyd members such as Roger Waters and Syd Barrett’s 'The Madcap Laughs' as the summer months went on before he returned back to college for a new term. When he left college and got his first job as an Office Junior, contact with these friends eventually faded. He grew out of their ways and ended up finding different friends. With the new found freedom of his own money and not misspent college grants, he went on to purchase hi-fi separates of his own and spend industrial amounts of money on trawling vinyl shops to replicate what Daz owned, or to even better it.

This young metalhead would even think nothing of buying complete discographies rather than just one mere album, with albums by Hawkwind, Deep Purple, Yes, Sisters of Mercy, The Mission, and even a job lot of Kate Bush records finding their way into his collection. Nowadays, this man has a comprehensive collection that stretches from Jimi Hendrix to Darkthrone. Death and black metal is still this guy’s specialist subject, but now he now knows about a whole tonne of music. Oh, he also got the rest of the Mike Oldfield albums too and just purchased Man on the Rocks this weekend just gone on vinyl.

It just goes to show, that an innocuous vinyl once heard at a friend's house many years ago can be enough to prove that it doesn't all have to be Strepsil sponsored vocals and power chords.

Ghost: What's The Point?

[Original article 'disappeared down the memory hole' by a certain website. Resurrected and revised for my own blog].

As a metal veteran that's been into the scene for two decades, you see many things come and many things go. Notably, one of the most memorable ones was (to my ears and eyes) the downfall of 'proper metal' that was brought by the late 90s wave of nu metal and pop metal bands; a time of which I wondered what the hell was happening to the scene. Fad bands appear, and disappear; some bands mature and outgrow a fad to transcend their roots – Deftones being the best example.
Recently, there's been a resurgence of what I call 'proper metal' – thrash metal, death metal has become more prominent, the reanimated corpses of hair metal, and five minute wonders that capture the imagination that are instantly disposable such as The Darkness for example. To be cynical, most of this is fuelled by the fickle minded pop culture powered by soundtracks heard on console games such as Grand Theft Guitar Hero, raiding charity shops to look like they fell from 1974; a culture sporting silly beards, dodgy flares, and paying money for old technology like music centres, film cameras and record players – because looking like you came from the past is apparently the new future. Over the past few years, visually and audibly – we have fell into a deep romanticism with wanting to emulate the past, spearheaded by the likes of watching Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. In fact, yours truly would give one of his gentleman vegetables to own a 1979 Ford Granada 2.8 Ghia just so I can fulfil my childhood wet dreams of cruising around looking like an extra from The Professionals.

Which brings me neatly onto a band that has jumped on a retro 1970s emulating Zeitgeist – the band in particular is Ghost, a band hailing from Sweden with strange quasi-satanic imagery and a sound that is a bland blend of 1970s rocks clichés.

Ghost, are a source of never-ending bemusement. I first heard of this band from a few friends who I know, and these guys are strictly of the 'kvlt' school who often question some of the bands that I hold so dear – even being as quirky to have a dislike of most forms of thrash metal, disliking the current neo-trash metal renaissance doing the rounds, and even picking holes with certain black and death metal bands and declaring them to be sell outs. In fact, the mention of one highly popular black metal band sends one of them into an incandescent rage when you point out that they once liked them – to reply with the aloof answer of “Well, we've all grown out of listening to them – why haven't you?”.
Yet, these very same people turn into shrieking teenage school girls when you mention Ghost. They have what I can only describe as a pathological adoration for them, and have seen them numerous times with other bands and have also seen them at festival appearances; declaring them to be the best thing since sliced bread or the invention of the wheel. Being a man who is willing enough to give anything the benefit of the doubt (who is often wrongly declared as rigidly liking nothing but black metal and trad goth/post punk/darkwave exclusively) I have decided to give them a listen. Hell, I even sat through Bring Me The Horizon which amongst my friends is universally hated!

So, what is exactly wrong with them? Well, musically they are pretty decent and can pen some nice riffs and melodies which obviously work well for what appears to a 'vast majority' of people out there. Personally, I'm not so sure. They're not an awful sounding band per se, far from it. There is a certain element amongst their song writing that just doesn't appear to work. Take the song 'Guleh/Zombie Queen' for example; it comprises of a simplistic chorus that is almost nursery rhyme like in structure with a style that appears to be stolen single handedly from a lysergic session of overdosing on far too many Blue Oyster Cult albums – and to be honest, this sort of thing has been done better before and inspiring more excitement to the listener.

Other problems with the band manifest themselves in the form of the vocals of Papa Emeritus. He has a nasally, and curiously patronising tone that you could be forgiven for thinking is singing with a condescending drone that mocks the listener: “Na na na na naaaa, we're a pub band covering Blue Oyster Cult, someone gave us a record deal - more fool you!”. The vocals feels like they have more to give, but are lacking any form of dynamics to drawn the listener in. The overall sound of the music comes across as a mockery and sound so terribly twee laced with faux Satanism in an attempt to sound edgy and cool. 'Monsterance Clock' demonstrates this perfectly, composed of a simple nursery rhyme song structure that continues on in a varying theme throughout their songs, while “If You Have Ghosts” and “I'm a Marionette” has cloying harmonious singing combined with Hammond organ backing that in essence is a musical rock death by syrup that should carry a diabetes warning, The musical acid test for me, is to play songs in a rock nightclub or in a rock pub somewhere to see if they can stand out amongst all the hustle and bustle of such an environment. If a band stands out enough, the punters will automatically feel compelled to ask what the band is and I've often heard a very catchy earworm that I couldn't shift out of my system for weeks on end because of such an occurrence. In the case of Ghost, they would simply fade into the background noise and become a part of the furniture that is for the most part unnoticed.



Which brings me neatly onto the imagery of the band; a look that has ripped off the cloaks and scary demeanour of Portal in an attempt to add further interest to the band, Don't get me wrong, a mysterious shadowy imagery for a band in the live setting is a good thing and I much prefer a band that 'looks the part' rather than a bunch of scruffy herberts that have wandered in off the street which was a problem that I have with pretty much all of the grunge bands that were out at the time. However, in the case of Ghost I feel that this is an excessive gimmick in a manner similar to Slipknot, which also matches badly. Visually, before you heard them you would expect something like King Diamond and think “Ah sweet, these Ghost guys look cool! I've got to check them out”. Sadly, it strictly ends there with music that sounds truly pedestrian and treads water.

It's all very well to emulate and express your roots which inspired your band, but I believe that you need to add something to it that makes it stand out from the crowd. Imitation is often cited as being the sincerest form of flattery, and then there's just out and out brown nosing that is quite nauseating. Sadly, Ghost take far too many pointers from well-established bands and in an effort to make themselves stand out from the crowd and do nothing to innovate and make themselves sound interesting. Cynical Ghost fans out there have pointed out that I am taking them too seriously and they should be enjoyed for what they are, rather than digging around too far into what inspired them in the first place. The neo-thrash renaissance is a perfect example; been done before but don't concentrate too seriously on the originators of the thrash scene and I can appreciate them for what they are, an enjoyable blast not to be taken too seriously.

One of the best subtweets I read one night went along the lines of “Ok, so Ghost suck because they're a modern band and don't come from 1974. So, if Ghost originally came from 1974, would that make them good?”

My answer to this: No

Good music doesn't age, be it released 5, 10, 15 or 30 years ago. I don't have a problem with bands that emulate a sound from days gone by, such as Grand Magus, Witchcraft, Big Elf, Broadcast and the more experimental works of Opeth that are heavily prog rock influenced that veer away from their extreme style. Ghost are a relatively new band, which I believe may find themselves painted into a corner one day in the future and become a flash in the pan. For me, I feel Ghost must try to innovate somehow as opposed to emulate. Other bands are inspired and innovate, but there is a neutered quality that is bland and curiously lacking no matter how many times I listen to them.

To conclude, Ghost had better enjoy the good times when they can. Eventually, the novelty will wear off and they won't be remembered like the classic bands of days gone by they emulate so much. However, at this moment in time they continue to succeed in filling out stadiums, and festival appearances appealing to a disposable Grand Theft Guitar Hero inspired fan base, probably crossing the lines into the mainstream musical conscious at some point. Long may you continue to baffle, and bemuse me in equal measure.