ALBUM REVIEW: Ghost Tapes #10 – God Is An Astronaut

Already a strong contender for most striking album artwork of 2021, Ghost Tapes #10’s cover depicts three corroding jet planes, suspended in space just above the earth. There’s an uncanniness to the image, a captivatingly eerie strangeness that’s both spooky and imposing. It also manages to neatly encapsulate GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT’s approach to Ghost Tapes #10. The music it contains (and only music, for the Irish band are a purely instrumental force) is majestic and vast, sweeping and often awe-inspiring. Yet it’s also ethereally strange, both atmospheric and melancholic, and occasionally downright sinister.

Though GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT’s sound has, over their two decade-long career, become increasingly linear and intense, there’s always been a palpable sense of urgency to their music, something that has made them much less portentous and ponderous than their post-rock peers. They’ve never utilised the languorous swells and releases made famous by EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY and THIS WILL DESTROY YOU, nor constructed fifteen-minute orchestral opuses in the vein of GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR or A SILVER MT. ZION. Tonally, they’re closest to MAYBESHEWILL and 65DAYSOFSTATIC, bands who, despite being considerably more electronica and glitch-reliant, possess a similar focus on urgency and kinetic drive. 

Ghost Tapes #10 is also one of GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT’s heaviest albums, meaning it shares some compositional similarities with post-metal acts such as PELICAN, ROSETTA and CULT OF LUNA. Whereas the band’s previous album; 2018’s grief-shrouded Epitaph, flirted with transcendent doom metal between its stretches of weighty ambience, Ghost Tapes #10 is much more driving and momentum-focused. These seven songs hurtle towards their destinations, as if they’re trying to outrun or escape something. Opener Adrift is especially ferocious, featuring a PELICAN-esque chugging middle section and squelchy synths that exude real weight and menace. In Flux and Spectres unfold similarly, featuring BPM’s rarely heard in post-rock, hurtling through dissonant chords and rumbling basslines. 

However, despite their newfound focus on heaviness and momentum, GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT haven’t abandoned their love of melancholic cosmic beauty. Barren Trees is especially wonderful, featuring hushed, swirling vocals of intentional indecipherability. Combined with piano arpeggios and huge guitars, it gives the track a truly star-strewn and otherworldly quality. Burial plays a similar trick, though one of a slightly darker bent. Perhaps the most structurally ambitious track on Ghost Tapes #10, it moves through its different parts with skill and confidence, gradually reshaping itself as something stranger and more twisted, particularly the stretch towards its end adorned with muscular, bouncing electronic jitters.

Ghost Tapes #10 is another excellent work by a band who, thus far in their career, have yet to put a foot wrong. Their commitment to tweaking their sound by focusing on different aspects of their musical intuitions is hugely commendable, and is allowing them to expand in ways that are even more technically-astute and engrossing than they had previously managed. If you’re interested in any form of atmospheric and textured rock music, joining GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT on this journey is an absolute no-brainer.

Rating: 9/10

Ghost Tapes #10 is set for release on February 12th via Napalm Records. 

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