Review Summary: “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”
-Bob Marley
Bob Marley was an undeniable visionary of style and sound, but I’ve always found this particular quote wanting. If music makes you “feel” happy, joyous, or even gives you a sense of accomplishment… the yin and yang of all things tell us we should be able to feel sadness, despair, anguish and failure by the same means. It’s probably a little weird bringing up a man so far unrelated to Finland’s Ghastly, but the connection between
Death Velour and oppressive tinged anguish leaves me completely dissatisfied with Mr. Marley’s thoughts on music.
It’s pretty easy to make assumptions about the primal and somewhat voiding feeling that emanates off Ghastly’s music. With happy song titles like “Death By Meditation”, “Violence For the Hell Of It” and “The Magic Of Severed Limbs”,
Death Velour lives and breathes in the murk. It’s as if Ghastly’s music personified the caverns from whence it came. The somewhat claustrophobic, uncertain production values give life to a contracting atmosphere further adding to the album’s old-school vibes in creating straight forward death metal.
Despite all sense of lucidity, the objective opposites to all levels of happiness readdress my thoughts on Marley’s overreaching, sweeping statement. Sure, you may not be able to “feel” the music in a physical sense as this man describes, but the implications on our mind run much much deeper.
Death Velour hits you, and it’s not happy. One thing is certain, the pain is real wherever you feel it.
