Ghoul Detail – Medicated : Noise/power noise/industrial/dark ambient

Reviewed by Gird_09

I admit both the name of the band and the cover of the album puts me off a great deal. It makes me think of an Insane Clown Posse clone, and considering how fucking awful the original is, well... Luckily my prejudice is just that, and nothing more. The music is a blend of noise, industrial and drone with deep and dark roots.

The machine like sonic landscapes on the album are easily hypnotic, and I find my thoughts drifting. In many ways the music reminds me of projects like Imminent (Imminent Starvation) and Converter but with a softer sensibility. That is the range of sounds is much the same, but the content and presentation is quite different, and much more ambient.

The result is a piece of atmospheric rust, and I like that. The crystal clear production values makes the music effective in conveying a feeling of scattered debris and battered junk, everything illuminated by an unhealthy glow. The music is certainly something you should listen to in a dark room, and alone. It's not an album you pop in the player during a date.

There are drawbacks too. As with many other albums in this landscape it's too bloody long. It gets boring after about fifty minutes, and very few albums have much staying power beyond that point. Music of this sort is solitary mood music, and staying focussed for that long is hard – unless you're distracted by other activities and just not doing the music proper justice.

My favorite track on the album is Pathfinder. It stands out against the backdrop and works really well as a slightly up tempo track. The beats are also a great contrast to the bubbly electronic bog of moist darkness in the track. A very good track, on a very good album.

2010, Dark Meadow Recordings, CD album,

http://www.myspace.com/ghouldetail
http://www.darkmeadowrecordings.com

1 Intro [1:18]
2 Black spoon rising [6:57]
3 Psittacosis [6:23]
4 Valium Sanctuary [8:37]
5 Pathfinder [8:21]
6 Scabies [7:37]
7 City of the Living Dead [8:54]
8 Interferon [7:08]
9 Sceptic Spectre [8:18]
10 Medicate my way to enlightenment [7:28]