Freakangel - How the Ghost Became

How The Ghost Became is Freakangel's most recent dive into music and transforms the band into a fully fledged industrial metal outfit. The Estonian project did have their roots in dark electro, aggrotech, and harsh EBM with their start in 2010 but slowly began a transition into finer tuned instrumentation free of distortion and seemingly shoddy production values. That transformation was seen in the album The Ones To Fall, wherein a blend of aggrotech and metal formed. However, the fruits of their labor would not bear justification until How the Ghost Became was officially released. 

First and foremost, Freakangel is presenting themselves as an industrial metal project through and through with electronic mayhem scattered throughout. Without the need to rely on so much distortion or digital interference, Freakangel's sound resonates throughout the album with the best production values I have heard from them so far. 'Insight', 'In The Witch House', and 'Death Walks With Us' can all be pointed out to exemplify these qualities. Then again, I suppose you could listen to any one of the songs on the album and say the same thing about them - they're all great tracks to jam out to at any point. 

'Hell and Back' turned out to be one of my favorites on the album. Dmitry Darling's destructive screams are backed by angelic humming from a second voice. The song itself is much more melodic and heartfelt than most of the other songs on the album serving up segments of harsh guitars and breaks where light, wobbly synths muscles in a takeover. 

How the Ghost Became is a ten track industrial metal powerhouse of an album. While this might not make much sense to those who only listened to Freakangel when they started out in 2010, I am more than sure those people will come off of the album wanting to discover what else they've been doing since then. Not only that, but the album is available in a beautiful package thanks to DWA, so go and grab yours before it's gone forever. 


Oct 04 2017