Reviews
I Am Ghost
Lover's Requiem
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Add to del.ico.us.Review Date: 2006-10-21
Before we get into this too deep: If you’re a fan of My Chemical Romance, if you’re a dude who likes to wear make up, if no one can understand your loneliness and yearning for love, or if you just don’t get enough allowance from your parents, you can stop reading this and just go buy Lover’s Requiem. For the rest of you continue on as you were.
On Lover’s Requiem, I Am Ghost have swapped Emo’s eighth grade poetry for Goth-Punk’s eleventh grade poetry. It’s delightful, particularly if you’re angry and between the ages of 12 and 19. That said it’s neither revolutionary nor particularly enticing outside the realm of the Goth-Punk scene.
Fresh off appearances at The Warped Tour in support of their self-produced debut EP, I Am Ghost showcase an amalgamation of strings, demonic guitar lines, vocal harmonizing and punk rock drumming. Boasting song titles like “Our Friend Lazarus Sleeps,” “Pretty People Never Lie – Vampires Really Never Die” and “The Ship of Pills and Needful Things” Lovers' Requiem is MTV glossy Goth-Punk perfection. To their credit, the guitars seem more influenced by the likes of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest than their contemporaries. However, don’t take that as an invitation to satisfy your metal cravings as Lover’s Requiem will surely disappoint.
I suppose I can’t blame I Am Ghost for not appealing to me. After all, Gothic sounds might sound new and fresh to the kids these days but for anyone who has actually listened to punk in the last 20 years, we’ve heard this already, granted not all over MTV. The sound is more refined, more polished, and ultimately more pop than anything you’ve probably heard from this genre. Thus, with all these pop sensibilities, and rock-opera leanings, a bunch of dudes singing and harmonizing with a dash of screaming doesn’t really come off as scary to me. I suppose its all in one’s reference point, as I Am Ghost seem super bad ass compared to Fall Out Boy and Panic at the Disco! (even with their scary exclamation point). However, compared to The Misfits, The Damned, Siouxsie and the Banshees or even AFI, I Am Ghost sounds more like Casper the friendly ghost.
This album is definitely not my bag, and in all fairness I really can’t relate to this prepubescent dribble, or maybe I have forgotten what it feels like to be a teenager. But at the same time, the lyrics are predictable and hollow (how many times have you heard “you were my favorite accident/mistake”… etc. in a song?). I can’t blame Epitaph for signing a band like I Am Ghost because I think that fans of this genre are going to dig this release, and if they dig this release they might just go pick something else from the label like Poison Idea or the Refused. You gotta start somewhere. I Am Ghost are scarier than Good Charlotte and slightly more depressing than the chubby lead singer from My Chemical Romance. What more could you want?
Score: 4
- Mark Browdy