Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The future is not written and yet every possible scenario that could plague humanity has been played out, thought of, given so much consideration by experts and the layman that if disaster did find its way into the rolling news there would be many who would shrug their shoulders and carry on digging a hole, avoiding all possible means of Impact.
The best scenario of obliteration is always the one in which aliens find their way to Earth and seeing it for the provincial back water that it is, somehow decide that the only viable solution is destroy the species that regards itself as master of all it surveys. The story can be told with brilliance, or it can be sold as a piece of derogatory furniture, the afterthought of C class science fiction, one with the intelligence to draw meaningful metaphor or the other to put concern into the minds of those with little imagination, either way the aliens seem to win.
Ghost Avenue’s Impact falls squarely into the realms of the enlightened, of the joy received in the soul when science fiction, no matter whether on film, in theatre or in aural sense, is performed with satisfaction and true belief in its heart. To lay down an album in the way that the band have done, to have the story of alien invasion within the confines of a music outlay is to nod graciously at the likes of Jeff Wayne and his version of War of the Worlds but ramp up significantly the way the music comes across, heavier, more beefed up and with the thrill of possible extinction hanging firmly in the air; this is a recording which suits the uncertainty of times and captures it perfectly.
The band’s third album is constructed with the thrill in mind, it truly makes the impact it aspired to do and in tracks such as Escape, Time Traveller and Dancing With The Devil, Kim Ihsak Sandvik, André Berger, Petter Christopher Lein, Magnus Liseter and Øystein Wiik have ensured that Rock music from Norway is again listened to with respect and imagination.
Ghost Avenue’s Impact is released on Pitch Black Records on February 3rd.
Ian D. Hall