Ghost : " Prequelle"

Everything following this band's first album has fallen flat. It's not been metal, which isn't the main problem. The main problem is the fact that it has sounded like Abba covering Blue Oyster Cult. Yep some real Satanic shit if you are a fucking pussy. So "Rats" the lead single off this album was encouraging as it sounds like they are now trying to rip off "Bark At the Moon" era Ozzy. The reverb on everything and the beefed up bass tone. Original...no, an improvement...yes. The more aggressive bass playing compensates for the wimpy vocals. "Faith" finds us not as lucky. The guitar has a little more beef to it than the previous albums, but not enough. Their fetish for keyboards is certainly not the band's strength, but they manage to compensate for it on "See the Light". It starts off more long the lines of Air Supply, but the guitar chugs in to save the day.

One of Ghost's biggest problems is they just are not as dark as they need to be. This is high lighted on the instrumental "Miasma". The heaviest guitar riff on this song could have come from a Ratt album. Ratt is actually more aggressive even on "Way Cool Junior". But if your gimmick centers around being evil then guys you gotta be darker than this/ The 80s continues on "Dance Macabre" which is like when the Scorpions sold out.. As cheesy as that is, it's an improvement over their past two albums. Lyrically its a catastrophe, but I'm trying to like this as much as I can. Somebody needed to throw the keyboards out of the god damn window and they might have stood half a chance. Lucifer tries to whisper silently in your mind on "Pro Memoria" but this piano filled travesty mucks up those sentiments. It's like a Styx song I would fast forward.

They return to the cock rock riffs going into " Witch Image" before wimping out with some real pansy shit leading into the chorus, that is like a Europe power ballad and I start waiting on the final countdown for this song to be over. It's a real shame as they get off to a much better start on this album, but have started to flush all that down the toilet. I'm not sure what is with the shitty instrumentals where they are trying to be Queen, but the second one is no better than first. The keyboards continue to be too happy. The end the album pretty limply. It's a piano driven power ballad. The vocals do benefit from better production this time around. However even with the studio's bag of tricks that are still weak and the ballads only point this fact out. This song is down right terrible. So say it sucks a dick, would make fellatio seem less masculine and leather bars are way more butch than this bullshit. I think giving this album a 5.5 is pretty fair since only the first half is worth a shit. If you think this is metal, the world doesn't need you and I encourage taking the needed measures like walking out into traffic as it is what Satan would want.