Review Summary: Not yet a perfect outing, but a very good one from the guys that lean towards heavier side of things, from grunge to shoe gaze.
Heaviness abounds on American Book of the Dead, the second EP from the Sacramento CA trio Ghost Color. And there is something definitely ghostly about their sound. It seems they’ve been sucking in any heavy sound that they could wrap their ears around, from just plain heavy rock, through any variation you can imagine, from metal, through grunge to even shoegaze, particularly the distortion and drone part. Of course, being from Sacramento, Deftones are an obvious influence on guitarist Eric Davis, bassist Bryan Harty and the singing drummer Chris Winstead. But then they throw in even a kitchen sink on these four tracks, just as long as there is some heaviness involved. There seems to be a slight favoritism towards the early Nineties and the sound of Nirvana and Ride approached from their angle.
The thing is, Ghost Colour’s music works when they don’t give it too much thought and only get down and let all those influences run their course by themselves. That works on the opener In Other Words, where those early Nineties are expressed the best. No wonder they decided to have it as the opener. Endeavour though does not fare that well. It seems like a song that goes well live, but somehow it has not transferred to the studio environment as good as it should have. Stay Asleep has a few more musical directions thrown in, but is probably the tune with the heaviest noise on the EP, but also has some good harmonies thrown in, with a good interplay with more calmer moments. Definitely worth a few more spins. Grieves, the closer, again, is not completely thought out but with its guitar workout throughout is surely a tune that goes down well with the fans.
And I’m sure that Ghost Color have quite a few fans, particularly where they had a chance to play live. They just need to fully transfer their live sound to the studio, which they have partly done here.
