the Wraith : "Ghost March"

 Two songs into this album and my first thoughts are these guys do the cock rocking goth metal better than Unto Others but are not quite on In Solitude's level. They also share more common ground with AFI than Unto Others. Their new front man Harley Mace, is actually the strongest element of their sound as he can belt it out with conviction. I am not sure however that I would call these guys death rock. Deathrock, as a dirtier sound. This lives in a zip code closer to Micheal Graves-era Misfits than it does 45 Grave or Christian Death. It is very high energy. Almost to a fault as they are racing through the graveyard when more dynamics might make it sound creepier, but at the current pace it feels more triumphant. 

"Afterlife" does give the vocals more room to breathe. They even let things break down some, but the overall tone of the album finds things uniformly uptempo. Mace's baritone is the most interesting thing when it cuts through to take center stage. Not as Sunset Strip as 69 Eyes, the in-your-face nature of the album is more akin to the "Black Sails in the Sunset". They offer more nuance on "Last Light" making it one of the album's strongest songs. One thing I like about Mace is he employs varied vocal colors sometimes taking on more of a snarl, at other times dropping into an even lower register that is more Peter Steele-like.  "End of Time" displays this really well. 

Their formula begins to lose a little of its gas on "Seize the Night". It is just more of the same, though they do this one thing really well. "Sea of Trees" closes the album with a darker tone, and a shift into a more brooding mood that sheds the punk straight-ahead charge and languishes in the dusk, which is what this album needs more of. I can hear this song being played on a goth night.  I will give this album a 9, it's really good if you miss the more punk days of AFI, but without Davey Havok's higher pitch shriek. This album drops April 19th on Seeing Red Records. 

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The Wraith : "Gloom Ballet"

The first song made me think that this was the former singer of Bellicose Minds, it's actually the former singer of Lost Tribe, so post punk revival pedigree intact. more uptempo, though the do ride the line between post and punk and straight up punk. By punk I am still thinking of the cross roads where bands like TSOL dressed their sound up for Halloween. There a is a darker more Killing Joke like energy to the second song. All of the needed sounds are dialed in a pretty much where they need to be in the mix. The Bat Cave guitar tone is right there.  There are places where the bass could stand to come up in the mix , but production wise it's on even better footing the Lost Tribe albums.  a little more finesse on "Toil" as they back off on the punk vibes here.

If Idle Hands never heard the Cult then the results might be similar. "Of the Earth" doesn't do as much for me as the previous songs. "Pyro" is more aggressive , but also offers more dynamics than the previous song.  "Devils Serenade" is more along the lines of the Misfits ,but with a more rock n roll touch to it.  This is felt especially at the chorus, but it is a lot of fun. On "I Expire" the vocals are more sung than yelled . This helps add more dynamic texture to the overall sound. The guitars are also layered to there is more of a strum to them. They are back on the more punk track with "the Gift of Suffering". post-punk tension to it on the verse, before exploding out of the chorus.  The chords ring out in a more rock n roll fashion, with the palm muted tension returning again on "Barbed Wire" . It goes to the well with this formula too many times.

I am glad the vocals colors shifted a little on the last. The punk shouted vocal that sounded like Bellicose Minds was getting old, it is not the melodic shift of "I Expire" that I prefer, but I will take what I can get as by this point in the album I was in need of a dynamic shift, as it almost took on a one trick pony punk monochrome.  I will give this album an 8, if you like the more punk side of the Bellicose Minds you will dig this , and if you were a fan of Lost Tribe then this is a must.