GHOSTEMANE released the long-awaited AM:FM this past Friday, October 23, his first full-feature album since the climactic ANTI-ICON in 2020; with a few collaboratory singles and EP's scarcely scattered in between. It is undeniably dark in its atmosphere, but in that not so innately brutal with reflective lyricism on the dopamine-deprived-sludge state of sobriety and responsibilities decreed with the experience of having children. The genre-fluid artist does what he does best on this album with its unique delivery of blended sonic blasts new and innovative as well as reminiscent and calling back to past mixes.
Opening with a heavy and hard hitting trio, Alive!, Deus Ex Machina, and Miazma belt out their fusion of distorted guitars and rhyming declarations. Into then, the singles released in anticipation of the rest of the album: Zero Day, a song getting its namesake and lyrical motif's from a 2002 film that depicts two high school seniors as they plot and eventually enact a school shooting, being heavily influenced by the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre; melding into the fugue of BucketList, a stoner's litany evocative of GHOSTEMANE's 2015 tape Astral Kreepin. Jupiter begins a descent into a more industrial edge, though this will peak in a further song on the track list. Slowing down quite a bit to a more passive number in the midst of the outlet aggression with Hyperdrive, its synths like a Swearr song and pattering drum loop. Retaining the slower pace with Mean Girls, but nevertheless as forthright as ever. Cyberia, the most explicitly industrial song, bringing to mind Skinny Puppy or Nine Inch Nails. Getting to Get Gone with a bombastic rap on dealing with that of a parasitic nature. NSFW enters in then with similarity to FLESH and bleeds out all the fucks it can. Close now to tying it off with Noose Knot, but cutting it at a close moment. Melodically tapering off with a somber note. A Fire In The Sky ends the album with a sound that is reminding of Iridescent by Linkin Park.
Altogether AM:FM presents a solid piece of artistic output and capability, as if it wasn't evident enough already.
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