Status: Single
City: MTL
State: Quebec
Country: CA
Signup Date: 11/14/2007
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Tuesday, December 02, 2008
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We
first heard from Ghast on their split with Yoga, we were pretty
obsessed with both bands and have been on the hunt for more from both
ever since.
 So
Ghast have returned, on yet another split, offering up two more loooong
tracks of their unique not-quite-doom, a dirgey crawl, that spends as
much time shimmering and buzzing as it does pounding and lumbering. The
opener here is 21 minutes of grinding corrosive soft buzz, think
Tunnels, Wolf Eyes, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, that sort of thing, deep
whirring low end, drifting beneath clouds of metallic buzz, plenty of
fuzz and hiss, beneath it all, there does seem to be some sort of thick
tarpit like riffing, but it's WAY down, more like a distant drone than
anything overtly metal, but it does lend the track a serious sense of
dread and foreboding, as if any second the track might splinter into
pieces and explode into crushing doom, but it never does, instead
ratcheting up the tension, like the soundtrack to some super abstract
foreign horror film. An actual rhythm dose seem to develop, but it's
cobbled together using hissy white noise, ominous whirring synths,
buried and blurred vocals, and a super drawn out low end melody,
creeping and creeping before the low end drops out leaving just a sea
of high end electrical buzz, and weirdly enough the sound of sheep (!).
The second track clocks in at nearly 12 minutes, and again, is more
ambient than anything, bits of crackle, melted tape loops, field
recordings, processed electronics, all blurred into a strange
undulating drone, peppered with fragments of melody, some buried
riffing, which finally crawls up from the murk, and the band, for the
first time in nearly half an hour, launch into some lurching lumbering
doom. But the sound is not massive or crushing, instead, it remains
murky and muted, more bass heavy than anything, if there is guitar it's
tuned WAY down and is locked in with the rumbling bass, the rhythm
mechanical and machinelike, with a definite industrial vibe, the track
slipping into brief stretches of ambient drone-like shimmer, before the
band lurches back into action, pounding away, stripped down, but still
heavy and doomy and mysteriously grim.
Rape-X
existed until now, as an MP3 file someone sent us a looong time ago, a
half hour slab of blown out metalnoise, industrial drone weirdness.
We'd notice it on the computer every once in a while and fire it up,
and always think, "wow, this is pretty great, I wonder when they'll
have a record". Well here it is. And Rape-X is a pretty good match for
Ghast, seeing as they traffic in a similarly abstract doomy ambience,
falling closer to Wolf Eyes or Blue Sabbath Black Cheer than any
classic sort of doom. The vocals are huge part of the sound, and are
harsh and super processed, demonic and maniacal sounding, giving the
track a bit of a Whitehouse feel, ranting and proselytizing over a
constantly shifting backdrop of blackened noise and droning harsh
ambience. A glorious metallic cacophony, wreathed in hiss and skree, a
bit like a way more static Sunroof!, the sound roiling and churning
below the surface like some rough black sea, while that hellish voice
continues to testify, the unholy scripture from some lost black gospel.
Caveat
Emptor, though: these have a pressing defect, it's minor, but it's
definitely noticeable. The band was contacted about it, but apparently
there's some bad blood with the label, so there will never be a new,
corrected version, so we figured we would list it anyway, since
otherwise it's pretty amazing, and the defect is so slight. Basically,
the problem is, there's a digitial click at the beginning of each
track. Annoying, distracting, yes, but it doesn't affect the songs
themselves, so if you can handle that (you can also edit out the clicks
yourself on your computer when you import it into your iTunes or
whatever), then by all means pick this up, some seriously abject and
harrowing doom-ed blacknoize.
12:18 AM
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