Crimson Ghosts - Leaving the Tomb
Now here is a nice surprise. The Crimson Ghosts are a four-piece coming from Germany, formerly known as being a cover band for the Misfits. Their fans put the pressure on them and wanted to have some original material: and here it is, 'Leaving the Tomb' is out.
Now when you see that they are described as a horror punk band, the first thought is: Oh no...another band who puts masks on and just do some random music, without even having good sound quality. They just want to be like most of the "horror punk" bands, get noticed and that's it. They don't care about the music; they just want to show off.
Thanks to this album you just forget about this whole horror look and you discover a band that has a real talent. Rather than a horror punk style, they sound more like a mix of Alice Cooper's vocals with modern metal riffs. The first notes sung by Vlad take you straight back to the 80's.
Even the titles are sometimes a bit cheesy: 'The King Of Skull-Island' or 'Necrobabe'. There is no real heavy sound, or if you really want to consider it as heavy, then it would be the heavy music like we understood it back in the 80's(KISS, Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, etc.)
Even if the fifteen tracks are good, they are quite similar to each other. It will probably take them some time to find their own style and their own 'personality'. But let's not be nasty, this is their first real album and after having spent so many years being a cover band they are doing a pretty good job here.
It's just a pity that they need to use masks and all this folklore as their sound is absolutely self-sufficient.