Ghost - Meliora

Ghost is a band I've always wanted to like, but could never really connect with, and from what I hear I'm not alone in that feeling. I mean I GET it - it's ABBA does doom metal. That's a fun concept, and I enjoyed their first album well enough, but their last, Infestissumam, left me wanting more from the band in terms of musical development. With Meliora, I'm once again left feeling a bit disappointed. Make no mistake, it's a solid album, but the music just doesn't fulfill the promise of the band's well-crafted image and artwork and interesting concept.

I share many people's reservations about the band's vocalist. He (whoever he is) continues to lack oomph, although greater use of multitrack vocal recording does mitigate it somewhat in some tracks. But he's not the only thing lacking oomph - that fucking snare drum bothered me the whole album. It's so wet-napkin that you can't even hear it at some points. That's not to say that the production is all-around bad, but it is oddly lopsided. There's some great tom and bass drum sounds on this album, as well as great distorted bass guitar on tracks such as 'From the Pinnacle to the Pit', but these just serve, if anything, to further highlight the utter wimpyness of other parts of the music. I just don't understand the decision to make the album so bass-heavy. Could it have something to do with hiding the somewhat-disliked vocals lower in the mix? I dunno, but personally I found myself constantly turning the music louder to get more out of it, something I almost never do.

Production aside, I had heard talk of this being Ghost's 'heaviest' album, and that is certainly true. Tracks such as 'From the Pinnacle to the Pit' and 'Mummy Dust' are quite heavy indeed, enough so to legitimately be classified as metal. The music is also supplemented by more use of keyboards, a nice all-round addition. The standout tracks for me are probably the aforementioned heavy pair, as well as 'Cirice', which makes some great use of dynamics. 'He Is' is some kind of uplifting power ballad ode to Satan (yay!) which is good fun. There are some stinkers too, however; 'Majesty' starts with a riff straight out of an AC/DC song, and ends up being about as boring as one.

In the end, I'm just left wondering what this band would be like if they had the real King Diamond as a vocalist. Oh well.

3 out of 5 Nameless Ghouls.

UPDATE: Almost a month later, and 'From the Pinnacle to the Pit' is still my fucking jam, so I guess there is something to this thing after all...