It’s now nearly two and a half years since Brit misanthropes Chasing Ghosts released their debut album, These Hollow Gods, on an unsuspecting world. Long term fans of the band will doubtless be pleased to note that, save for the band no longer being affiliated to Danish label Mighty Music, not much else has changed for the band.

Main man Lee Breuton continues to churn out misery for the masses; musically there is little to choose between this three tracker and the band’s full length in terms of sonics. The band still run a nice line in draconian heavy metal, embellished by mournful strings and evocative keyboard flourishes. They got a lot of comparisons to fellow Brits Paradise Lost last time around, in reply to which they’ve gotten PL’s knob-twiddler of choice Jaime Gomez Arellano onboard for the mixing and mastering of Bring Me Suffering. You might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb…

But all joking aside, Arellano has sharpened the sound, bringing things into better focus. Vocalist Nelson Cancini impresses, augmented this time around by second vocalist Meghan Pettitt on two tracks. And whilst Paradise Lost again are the obvious band to pull out when pointing potential new fans in the direction of Chasing Ghosts, it’s Cancini’s vocals that point to bigger and better possibilities to come. He has a fine voice, certainly stronger than Nick Holmes, which leads one to feel that, should the rest of the band wish to spread their wings a little from the goth metal template in the future, they have a vocalist more than capable of handling whatever is given to him to sing.

Sterner critics than me might have wanted to see a little more water stylistically between the band’s debut album and this EP; however the band do what they do very well, and as they are clearly still developing and finding their own voice it would be churlish to criticise them for putting out what is in reality a very solid EP. More power to them, and let’s hope the future turns out to be as bright for Chasing Ghosts as it looks to be from where this reviewer is sitting.

 

Bring Me Suffering releases on June 12th.