MP3: Ghost Brigade - Based on you
This will be my last Friday post looking back at 2006 artists/tracks I missed the first time 'round. Next week: back to trudging through history for older songs worth highlighting. Moving on...
It's not clear to me exactly how Finland's Ghost Brigade slipped through the cracks. I'm pretty sure I downloaded their demo the first time that Teemu from Lupatarkastaja recommended it, but I guess I must've not listened very hard because they never stuck. Eventually I decided to revisit the band after hearing about their signing to Season of Mist and - holy shit - I knew immediately that I blew it. I've had the song I'm posting today, "Based on you", on regular repeat in my mp3 player for at least a month now. I just love the way the rhythm section pulses steadily like a machine; in this case, a bulldozer that you just know is ready to flatten you. There's tons of tiny little flourishes in the way the band locks together on fills, the mark of true professionals and a high attention to detail. Not a single note is wasted or out of place. The way the verse gradually reintroduces the main riff flows perfectly, too. They get a little 'metal-by-numbers' ("This is the gay part / with melody!") with the choruses at times, but it's forgivable. If that's their only shortcoming, it's certainly no deal-breaker. It's just that I find that frontman Manne Ikonen lacks the pipes to truly pull off 'clean' singing. His gruff-styled vocals are far more powerful.
Since I know that the metal genre is imposing to a lot of people, consider the following: Ghost Brigade might be extremely heavy, but they are also very melodic and very much rooted in pop song construction. If you can get into stuff like Queens of the Stone Age or even Alice in Chains, there's no reason you shouldn't also be able to appreciate this. It's all just rock'n'roll, y'know?
Ghost Brigade - Based on you