18. Gospelheim - "Ritual & Repetition"

So, I know this geezer in a band and that band has done an album. And coz I know him and see him at gigs and out and about and all, I felt duty-bound to listen to it and see where it got to in my mammoth listening session. 

I may have even promised that it could make the hallowed hundred, well I put the emphasis on could. Bottom reaches mind you, but still the hundred. But that’s at least five hundred places than Papa Roach.

Then it turns out to be good. Actually, not just good but Jesus H Christ on a bike good. And now I’m slightly hamstrung and actually rather embraced because this is the guy I know’s band, and bloody Norah if it was a name band that has made this record, I would be tossing superlatives around like confetti. But it's a guy I know’s band, and I am sure he is way too modest to realise he has crafted a bloody corker of an album that deserves a massive audience.

It's goth but with added black metal but with the sense of irony cunningly restored and you can whistle it. It's heavy and ethereal but with a strong sense of anthemic and bombastic. It’s liquorice flavor bubble gum. There is a dark bitter undertone, but it is encased in wonderfully lush sugary goodness.

At the end of the day, it is a band I see gigging their guts out all over the shop and they have gone and produced an album that's way better than the mega acts we all pay hundreds of pounds to see live could ever conjure up. You see my quandary, it’s an album by a guy I know and he has quite simply created a masterpiece.