ALBUM REVIEW: Mercurial Passages – Ghastly

There simply has to be something in the water in Finland to produce a band who conjure visions as nightmarish as GHASTLY do. They’ve penned two albums of diabolical terror already, and their third album Mercurial Passages is no exception, relying on eerie builds, frantic bursts of speed, and doom-laden passages to ensnare and horrify. 

Opener Ouroborus snakes into view, an ambient drone that recalls ancient terrors of the void, before a tom roll and swirling, evil guitar work takes its place. Where other bands seek only to bludgeon with gargantuan riffs and pounding drums, GHASTLY take a somewhat different approach. The guitar work evokes an atmosphere of evil, oppression and of the things that go bump in the night. Deep sea horrors lurk just at the edge of vision on Out Of The Psychic Blue as it careens into view, the fast pace like waves crashing into a ship before the slower passages allow the giant kraken to rise from the depths. 

From there we’re treated to the dense chug of Sea Of Light as it stomps and churns while the cavernous roars provide a grim accompaniment. The snare placement here occasionally feels a little off the beat in the faster moments, as if the whole thing is shackled together by darkness and hate rather and could come apart at a moment’s notice. It seems an odd, if off-putting, choice at first but on repeat listens does endear itself insofar as something this evil can. 

The oppressive atmosphere is helped by the production; it’s claustrophobic and smeared in grime, the guitar tone a poisonous serrated edge and the drums beating a thundering cacophony of ritualistic patterns. The vocals are more like incantations fed through a tortured mind, emerging as predatory howls. 

Each track stands as a facet of the whole horror trip; from Sea Of Light with its stomping, groove-laden pace and to Parasites‘ frantic blast beats, occasional pinched harmonics and blackened riffing. That said, it’s Dawnless Dreams that proves to be the standout, while it might open with what seems like a death/doom passage, it soon morphs and mutates in unexpected directions before your very eyes. Its sprawling eight and a half minutes are spent meandering through various corridors of evil and horror, all wrapped round a core of barbarity.

That’s also perhaps the best way to describe both the album and GHASTLY as a whole. Mercurial Passages is just that – mercurial. Songs are not straightforward and it’s almost psychedelic in parts, an album designed for altered states of consciousness that traps you within labyrinthine corridors that fold in on themselves endlessly. If you can bear to stare into its abyss, you’ll soon discover there’s a lot more than just the abyss that stares back from the depths. 

Rating: 7/10 

Mercurial Passages is out now via 20 Buck Spin.

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