Review Summary: All in all, pretty damned good album from a brand of music I wouldn't have given much chance to in my teenage-anarchist-punk-rocker-all-commercial-music must die years. It's probably a good thing that I waited five years to actually check this album out,
I remember hearing a song from these guys on a Warped Tour compilation cd I purchased five years ago and really liking it. I always intended at the time to get around to listening to more of their material but for some reason I had never really gotten around to it. Then the other day I was going through my fairly large cd collection adding songs one at a time to my new Zune and I stumbled across that old Warped Tour comp. I started listening to it, taking a memory trip down a time when I was more punk rocker than metalhead (the current case being the very opposite), then We Are Always Searching came on. I remembered how cool that song was and ran off to the local music store *cough* abittorrentsite *cough* to get a copy of Lover's Requim.
I must say, I can't believe I put that gem off for so many years. This is a great band. Listening to I Am Ghost is like listening to a punk/emo band with a really bad case of Iron Maiden influence and it balances itself out so well that neither side is able to dominate well enough to cause the music to be generic or cheesy. I'm never sure if I should consider them a heavy metal band or not, because there are definitely passages, some lasting a minute or more, that are more than your average post-hardcore band wanking around on the fretboard in a vaguely metallic way or more than a crossover thrash/crust punk band throwing in a few skullbanging riffs. The guitarist is obviously a metalhead. And not the kind of metalhead that starts mosh pits in wal-mart at 3 a.m. because his iPod started playing a song as brutal as his low IQ count, but the kind of metalhead that ejaculates powerfully at the end of a 5 minute solo.
Not only is it ambiguously metal but it's good metal at times. If the male lead singer didn't sound like every other metalcore/emo/post-hardcore/pop-punk singer that came out between 2005-2008 I'd say this was FANTASTIC metal, but it doesn't quite reach that height due to some unfortunately rather generic "core" moments where it sounds just a little too much like Bullet for My Valentine or Thrice.
The lyrics for the album are at their best Sing the Sorrow era AFI but at their worst sound more like the unfortunate Post-Decemberunderground era AFI that has turned that band in to such a joke. Luckily the lyrics don't dip that low too often and they're thankfully deprived of Davey Havok's awkward post-Decemberunderground homoeroticism. The album is supposedly a concept album aping its plot from Shakespear's romeo and Juliet, telling the story of a tragically fated angel-demon love affair with heaven and hell on either side.
The album starts with Crossing the River Styx. The song plays out as a latin chant, immedietely kicking off I Am Ghost's serious case of genre identity confusion. When's the last time you heard anything in latin from a post-hardcore band? That level of over the top D&D caliber nerdyness has usually been the domain of heavy metal. Despite latin chant intros being ridiculously overused in heavy metal, that half of I Am Ghost that takes its cues from pop-punk/emo serves it well here, making this one of the more interesting chant intros I've been forced to bear again and again (if you're not a fan of heavy metal it's impossible for me to convey to you just how bad metal bands are about that). During the chant Steve Juliano's youthful pop-punky tenor and Kerith Telestai's "innocent maiden" vocals lend a welcome change to the usually dry and boring singing of the more traditional monks who pray at the church of heavy metal. So the album has already gotten off to a decent start.
Our Friend Lazarus Sleeps starts off pretty generically. This is nothing you haven't heard from the emo/metalcore era. When the fairly catchy chorus kicks up the song is redeemed with an awesome reverb soaked metallic riff that reminds you of a Sega Genesis era video game soundtrack. The next song, Killer Likes Candy, desite the ridiculous title, is a pretty solid track. The lead riff starts things off well. Steve Juliano and Kerith Teleestai trade vocal passages back and forth to good effect, keeping things interesting and dynamic. Luckily the song lengths are more punk than metal so just when the lead riff starts to get less interesting the next song, Dark Carnival Of The Immaculate kicks up. In a too obvious nod to the band's goth influences, a circus tent intro starts the song off before the distortion kicks in. The lyrics however are a shining point of the song and the bridge after the small breakdown is a fantastic moment for the album containing yet more confusingly metallic but well appreciated riffing.
Up until this point Kerith Telestai's violin hadn't done much more than back up the guitars and add a layer of dimension to the rhythms. Pretty People Never Lie, Vampires Never Really Die makes slightly better use of the violins playing occasional lead through the song, though it all too often gets buried in the mix behind the guitars. Beyond that the song is actually one of the weaker offerings on the album, though that's not to say it is bad in any way, just less good. Of Masques and Martyrs starts off on a metallic note and is the beginning of a string of more-metallic-than-punk songs, sounding like the bastard child of Bullet for my Valentine and Nightwish. The title track, Lover's Requiem continues this trend sounding like it would fit well on a Trivium album. The chorus for this song is extremely strong and the break down/bridge three minutes in to the song is an emotional high point for the album. Both Of Masques and Martyrs and Lover's Requiem have fantastic lyrics and are obvious recommends to a metalhead who isn't familair with I Am Ghost.
We Are Always Searching, aside from being the song that introduced me to the band, it is also the oddest song on the album. Telestai's violin starts the song up with sharp jabs that for once aren't buried six feet under the guitars. A whispery intro verse introduces some more great lyrics and those lyrics remain quality throughout the song continuing to tell the angel-demon love story through a catchy chorus and emotional singing from both vocalists. The Ship of Pills and Needed Things is yet another song that would fit well on a Trivium album. It's also probably the heaviest song on the album with a groovy metalcorish riff in probably the lowest key on the entire album.
The Denouement. More latin chanting by Steve Juliano. Again, it actually sounds interesting. Then suddenly the guitars start chugging slowly and the violin kicks in mournfully. The guitars start playing along. Terestai joins in and the guitars explode in cascading powerchords while the violin plays an emotional lead. The song is only 2 minutes long and doesn't follow a verse-chorus-verse structure but it's beautifully executed and when it ends you'll feel a breif pang of sadness at the lost potential to turn an intermission track into the best song of the album. The song had amazing potential but was cut far too short just when it began to crescendo. Then the next song kicks in and you stop giving a s%$t. This Is Home is essentially the ballad of the album. More genre confusion. Emo/post-hardcore bands typically either treat every song on the album as a ballad, or don't seem to understand that its okay to play at less than 160 BPM. The whole song reaks of more metal influences, especially when the solo kicks in channeling the ghost of hair metal.
I Am Ghost literally saved the best for last with Beyond the Hourglass. The song is the most complex and dynamic offering on the album with a lot of arcs and twists to keep the listener interested. At three and a half minutes in to the song the guitar and violin start trading back in forth on a brilliant minute and a half long solo that ends in yet more latin chanting and a chugging guitar rhythm. Prior this point if you didn't understand what I meant by genre confusion you do now. The whole song is battered and deep fried in a giant tub of heavy metal and it's my favorite song by this band so far.
All in all, pretty damned good album from a brand of music I wouldn't have given much chance to in my teenage-anarchist-punk-rocker-all-commercial-music must die years. It's probably a good thing that I waited five years to actually check this album out, because if not for my current heavy metal leanings I probably wouldn't have appreciated what it has to offer, especially among the generic storm of melodrama its peers had been releasing at the time.
