DEVIN TOWNSEND — Ghost (review)

DEVIN TOWNSEND — Ghost album cover Album · 2011 · Non-Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
2.5/5 ·
adg211288
Ghost is one of a pair of albums released by Canadian musician Devin Townsend under his Devin Townsend Project moniker in 2011. It is paired with the album Deconstruction. Ghost focuses on Devin’s atmospheric side, while the other album focuses on his metal side. On Ghost Devin performs what is essentially a brand of atmospheric progressive rock, with plenty of ambiences to boot and some hints of folk as well.

In comparison to its metal partner, Ghost is very much a relaxing and laid-back affair, in pretty much a reactionary sense to Deconstruction, both musically and lyrically. Ghost is like the grown up and mature big brother to the crazy and often comedic Deconstruction. It’s nice to hear that there are many sides to Devin Townsend, but is this case I’m not overly fussed about the results.

The album is just as well crafted as any prior work of Townsend’s that I’ve heard, and many of the melodies are simply beautiful. The trouble it suffers from that fact that the album is just too long at about seventy-two minutes. I like atmospheric music and I feel that an album such as Ghost is good but in moderation. This is just too much and about half way through my attention has started to wander. I still enjoy Ghost a fair bit, but when put up against its progressive metal partner, I know which one of the two I’m going to want to listen to the most. The biggest problem in terms of length though is actually a problem that is shared between the two albums; the longer songs such as Feather, Texada and As You Were feel dragged out, and I strongly feel that Ghost would actually be a stronger effort overall if it was trimmed down to perhaps a forty minutes duration at most.

Ghost is an oddball of an album because it’s beautiful and well crafted, yet somewhat boring in parts. Whereas Deconstruction really delivers the goods (mostly), Ghost falls short of even being solid. It’s a good album to be sure, where all the ingredients are worthy of praise, but the end result just isn’t memorable enough. Those into atmospheric music will likely enjoy it, and I’m sure Devin’s biggest fans will still lap this up, but I’ve heard much stronger takes on atmospheric music in the past. To be honest neither of the Devin Townsend Project albums released in 2011 met my expectations based on the hype around them, but Ghost gets the dubious distinction for being a bitter disappointment as well.

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven, scoring 6.0/10)
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