Artist: Life As A Ghost
Album: Drifter
Genre: Metalcore

Several years ago, when I was about sixteen years old, and vastly unqualified, I worked at a music school, the concept of the place was pretty neat actually, not only did they offer private lessons, but they taught full bands, and had a summer camp, where kids formed bands, and got to record a song. As interesting as the idea of the place was, it sort of fell short of it’s potential, the first reason being the horribly unorganized administration, the second, and probably more important factor, being that they had a Playstation with Guitar Hero for the kids to play. Kids bugged me all day long – guitar in hand – asking if we could take a break to play Guitar Hero. I’ve never come so close to hitting a child in my entire life. I sort of feel like this Guitar Hero mentality has made it’s way into the realm of real music; why actually play something, when a basic simulation of guitar playing will do? I feel like the depth and skill required for Guitar Hero isn’t too far of a departure from that required for those simple open chord, chugging breakdowns. And while I am still a fan of a well-executed, and well placed, simple but brutal chugging breakdown, the phenomena has gone way too far. Bands have begun using simple, recycled, chugging patterns over verses, for intro tracks, build ups, and the originator; breakdowns. Things have gotten just a bit too ridiculous, and too many bands are playing into it these days, and I was convinced that Life As A Ghost’s new album Drifter was a perfect representation of the music being made by the Guitar Hero bands. At first listen, all I noticed where way too many breakdowns, faux-guitar sweeps, and other cues that would take no imagination to transcribe into 5 buttons, and a paddle, molded into the shape of a guitar.

The epitome of this sort of musical cop-out was showcased on the opening track off Drifter, “Inceptor”. They somehow managed to turn the entire introduction track – nearly a full minute long – into nothing more than chugging guitars, supplemented with the occasional micro-lead. It comes off as absurd on a whole new level, and really didn’t get things off to a good start; right off the bat, I did not have a very good opinion of this album, after such a poorly thought out move, the rest of the album was surely to be an uphill battle. But that being said, Life As A Ghost fought back admirably, they stumbled at times with chugging verses, and unnecessary electro effects, playing into the metalcore fans’ new obsession with the rave scene, but the album did have it’s shining moments. The title track, “Drifter” redeemed them quite nicely, the song wasn’t overly contrived like some of the other tactics used by the band, and throughout the album, the clean vocals were remarkable. Overall, through the mixture of metalcore’s technicality, and the most post-hardcore sounding clean vocals, the band creates a nice balance that, most of the time, is more than just listenable, but quite good as well. At this point, I’m still pretty amazed that they’ve managed to work their way back from such an abysmal and unimpressive start; they came back in a big way, I went from nearly turning the album off and giving up off principal alone, to actually really enjoying it, which is quite a leap.

Life As A Ghost may not have perfected their sound just yet, they’re definitely still growing, but they’re on their way to weeding out the nonsense and becoming a good and respectable band. Drifter is just a step along the way, and while it can be seen as a showcase of potential, it doesn’t mean that this album isn’t worth listening to; it’s actually very impressive, but it isn’t an album without flaws. They just need to ditch some of the more superfluous stuff, and dig a bit deeper than the Guitar Hero level of musicianship they fall into at times. Because throughout Drifter, it is abundantly clear that there is more to this band than just another scene band, relying on chugging breakdowns and rhythms; the talent is certainly there, I just hope I can see more of it next time.

SCORE: 6/10
Reviewed by: Mike Hogan

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James Shotwell

James Shotwell is the founder of Under The Gun Review. He loves writing about music and movies almost as much as he loves his two fat cats. He's also the co-founder of Antique Records and the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. You should probably follow him on Twitter.

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