Scene and Heard – CCCLXXX :  Parasitical Identity –  Love Ghost (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Love Ghost have always been good at raising concerns from the younger perspective without sounding like whining teenagers. After years of pre-pubescent pop-punkers moaning because they had to tidy their room and the chart filled with generation X-box artists making musical mountains out of the molehills of their everyday lives, from getting dumped to the hardships of loosing your phone, at least bands like Love Ghost actually have something to say. Here they present a scenario that discusses the issue of bullying and perception, of acceptance and understanding rather than judging people on first impressions.

As videos go it is compelling and strange, coming off almost like the sort of thing Peter Gabriel was toying with in the early days of music video but taking an altogether darker tack. It takes you a few runs through to truly get the plot line but like most art the fun is in the journey to understanding it rather than just having all of the answers presented to you on a plate. Musically it is the band doing what they do so well, blending swathes of cavernous guitars with space and atmosphere, switching between intricacy and power, using delicate riffs to hold back tense and terse sonic tsunamis before unleashing them to maximum effect. 

Here’s something for you to ponder. Imagine if Mudhoney had paid their dues in the industrial wastelands of Birmingham, England in the late sixties. Or conversely Black Sabbath had invented grunge whilst touring around the American North-West. You can’t imagine either of those scenarios? Well, take a listen to Parasitical Identity and you get a sonic glimpse of what either of those alternative scenarios might have resulted in. It’s a song that blends the slow, doom laden riffs of the originators of heavy metal with the uncompromising, raw edged onslaught that those stalwarts of grunge were known for. 

And because of these conflicting and disparate sounds that seem to entwine at the heart of their music they are a difficult band to place both in time and also geographically speaking. The best you can say is that they probably exist somewhere in the western world sometime from the seventies onwards. That’s actually a great quality to have. Why would you want to be identifiable as this genre or that style when you can be a mercurial, hard-hitting and highly unique blend of references?

And at the risk of making Mya Greene the centre of attention againafter taking about her sonic contribution so much last time I wrote about the band…why no viola?