Ghost Brigade – Until Fear No Longer Defines Us

This is Ghost Brigade’s third full length release, quite impressive I should assume. Let’s take an inner tour to these weird Finnish lads.

First of all I have to admit that the start of the album stands out as more than experimental and in my opinion perfectly successful. I’m refering to the track “In the woods” which a nice melancholic acoustic guitar /vocals song that beautifully brings the audience to the aqcuired mood to listen and follow the rest of the album. A very nice and smart idea indeed!!! The next 9 tracks that follow though happen to be another secret face of the band’s sound, never revealed before.

Katatonia’s Ghost dominates most of their related sound proposals, although, on this one I have to admit Ghost Brigade take their sound more seriously into the depths of extreme music paths.

Apart of its heavy tuned guitars, the perception of their sound has been lifted up in a more aggressive style and the elements that started showing up in their previous album “Isolation Songs” now have taken a lot more space in the compositions that complete “Until Fear…”.

A faster flowing tempo idea has overtaken most of the songs and some sludgy ISIS-related elements have started to overtake their mistaken “Katatonia-copy” tag…Although it’s hard not to relate them with Katatonia’s work as Manne Ikonen’s vocal approach almost makes it inevitable.Great production, stable and not so overloaded as most in our times. Great growls and more self dependent identity than in their past releases.

Although something seems to be missing from “Until fear…” to be called their magnum opus, and as their music has just started being more clear and unique, I believe that this is their first really good album, which in the future will be considered as the first that structured their own sound and hopefully all progressive atmospheric death metal audiences will be given an album worth not to be missed. Check them out because they are close to that one big step!