Bands out of Greece aren’t exactly bands you come across every day but Ghost Season are one of those. The four-piece, alternative metallers, just released their debut record, Like Stars In A Neon Sky.
The album starts with the build up, mellow track The Reckoning before launching into Sons of Yesterday. The first thing you notice is this is a hard-hitting, in your face record and that band sound a bit like Machine Head. Frontman Hercules Zotos (amazing name!) sounds so much like Robb Flynn at times it’s eery but very cool at the same time. Guitarist, Nick Christolis, is extremely talented and Helen Nota‘s drums are very dominant.
Christolis’s guitar work has the capability of becoming some of the best in metal. To be the sole guitarist in the band and for it to stand out this much and be so good, it’s fantastic. Especially on tracks like Break My Chains and The Highway Part II.
The penultimate track, Of Hearts and Shadows, sees the band try something a bit different with this mostly acoustic track showing another side to the band. Zotos shows he can handle softer vocals as well as his usual heavier, hard rock style. The song plays out beautifully and leads to a massive breakout towards the end where the whole band come in.
One of the first thing I noticed before starting to listen to this album is the final track is called Break Me Shake Me. The first thing I thought was “surely that’s not a Savage Garden cover”, and I was getting ready to make a joke in the review about how it wasn’t… It turns out, it absolutely is, and they bloody nail it!
Like Stars In A Neon Sky is an album which took me by surprise. From the one song I knew by Ghost Season, this album blew me completely out of the water. It’s a bloody solid metal album and a fantastic debut and is absolutely an early contender for album of the year.
