Death and doom boil to the surface in Ghastly’s newest album, Mercurial Passages.

Ghastly hails from Finland and Mercurial Passages is their third full-length album following Carrion Of Time (2015) and Death Velour (2018). As three-piece metal bands go, Ghastly creates a full and heavy sound than you might imagine possible, achieving unexpected penetration and breadth. Ten years in, they still seem to be gaining momentum.

There are seven tracks on the album. It starts off doom-centric with “Ouroborus,” a song that does give you a feeling of perpetual struggle. “Out of the Psychic Blue” follows and has a fast clip throughout thereby giving the listener a more direct taste of the Death Metal aspect of the band. It is “Sea of Light” that strikes me as the first song of the set that represents the core of the band and its compositional approach with its big builds, growling vocals, and frenetic outburst that punctuate and disrupt the steady state.

The album is anchored by two big tracks at the end, “Dawnless Dreams” and “Mirror Horizon.” The former is a dark story filled with Eldritch secrets and lurking, fell beasts while the latter is an even darker story with a saturating heaviness and hopelessness that drives you down into the endless abyss. The guitar in the second half of “Mirror Horizon” is playing you off into eternity and the dual vocal performance is hair-raising in its creepiness. This is the stuff of the most desolating, dreaded dreams. Recommended.

20 Buck Spin releases Mercurial Passages on Friday, May 28^th. Look to the label website or Bandcamp for all the possibilities.

Band photo by S. Kujansuu.

Links.

Bandcamp, https://listen.20buckspin.com/album/mercurial-passages

Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/ghastlydeathmetal

20 Buck Spin, https://www.20buckspin.com/products/ghastly-mercurial-passages-cd