Ghost Brigade - Until Fear No Longer Defines Us

Ghost Brigade is quite possibly a progressive death metal band from Finland. I say quite possibly because I’m not real sure about the progressive death metal part. There are certainly death metal bits to their third album “Until Fear No Longer Defines Us” and they also have got a definite progressive sound to them as well. The thing is that there is a lot of progressive sounding material that you would never relate to death metal. And there is straight up death metal that doesn’t sound progressive. So I’m not sure whether it’s a good fit. Oh, and it’s kind of doom-y as well.

I’ve heard bits and pieces of Ghost Brigade in the past but it was always the death metal parts and so I pegged them as just another typical death metal band. But now I’m listening to this and there seem to be more clean vocals than harsh and the music sounds like a better fit in the doom category, loosely shelved near the Katatonia section.

Whatever you want to label this or compare it to, there are two things I can say for certain. One is that this is a pretty bleak sounding album. It makes me want to put a jacket on. Since they are from Finland that is not entirely a surprise; Finland exports some pretty depressing music (hello Sentenced!). I just noticed that the keyboards appear to have been done by Aleksi Munter of Swallow the Sun, so there is a similar band if you want to make a comparison. The harsh aspects of Ghost Brigade do have a bit of a Swallow the Sun vibe.

The second thing I am certain of is that this album is pretty cool. There is a lot going on between all the different stylistic elements and I’m sure I’ll need a few more listens before I can become familiar with it and appreciate it all. It seems a bit at odds with the weather outside the window right now, but I think once October/November rolls around I’ll be getting a lot of mileage out of this album.

PS - Cool album title.