Band:	Vulture Industries
Album:	Ghosts From The Past
Style:	Avantgarde metal, Progressive metal
Release date:	June 2023

01. New Lords Of Light
02. Saturn Devouring His Young
03. This Hell Is Mine
04. Deeper
05. Right Here In The Dark
06. A Strangers Curse
07. Tyrants Weep Alone

Vulture Industries are one of those charming bands that managed to pick up the ‘avant-garde’ tag not by being aggressively eclectic or divisively experimental, but purely by sounding unlike anyone else, even while feeling familiar. They’ve been on a good run of form with their releases thus far, and evidently they decided there was no reason to buck that trend on Ghosts From The Past.

My introduction to Vulture Industries was 2013’s excellent The Tower, which received an excellent review from R’Vannith at the time. The 2017 follow-up Stranger Times was a record I clearly liked based on my rating of it, but it’s one I have very little memory of, so I’m effectively reintroducing myself to Vulture Industries a decade after my first exposure, and it’s been a thoroughly enjoyable experience. There’s something so inherently charming about what they do, even if it’s hard to pin down exactly what it is that they do.

Arcturus are a group that have frequently come up in conversations about Vulture Industries, but it’s hard to hear much of anything resembling them these days; instead, it’s a different group of their Norwegian compatriots that feels perhaps most relevant, namely Major Parkinson. Both groups share a degree of theatricality, particularly in the vocals; this new album, however, has a more serious tone, so I no longer really get cabaret vibes from it. The typically dramatic vocals of Bjørnar Erevik Nilsen are accompanied by a prog-tinged sound that lingers somewhere on the boundary between rock and metal, containing moments that at different times have me thinking perhaps of Danzig, Billy Idol, or Tom Waits, Nilsen’s favourite artist.

Whether the above gives an accurate impression of what to expect from Ghosts From The Past, I’m not entirely confident; frankly, I feel like I probably don’t listen to enough of the music that Vulture Industries listen to describe them properly. What I do know is that this record is pretty great, from the off and through to the end. The opener, “New Lords Of Light”, is arguably the least noteworthy track here, but it’s still a fun driving rock track with a warmth to the mix and instrumentation. It’s quite a fast song overall; “Saturn Devouring His Young” sustains that drive for the most part with pounding percussion pushing the verses along, but the chorus is a more evocative grandstand moment.

Those opening duo make for a solid introduction to the record, but a bit more of the personality of Vulture Industries emerges afterwards. “This Hell Is Mine” is a highlight of the album, channeling a similar Western blues feel to the one that made me enjoy Trophy Scars’ Astral Pariah so much, and offering Nilsen a great opportunity to demonstrate his deep-voiced crooning abilities. “Not By Blood, But By Words” is in a similar ballpark, but opts for a more sinister outlook, malevolent whispers and bleak semi-spoken vocals paired with a sound that is understated yet ominous.

Ghosts From The Past sees Vulture Industries in a slightly toned-down mood compared with The Tower; this record is over 20 minutes shorter, and as a consequence features less in the way of long songs. The one exception is the closer “Tyrants Weep Alone”, which feels like a microcosm of what the group have been striving to achieve with the record as a whole. The song is typically vocal-driven, subdued crooning and stripped-down acoustic guitars signalling the beginning of a gradual escalation of intensity until Nilsen’s voice is soaring a few minutes in. Around the halfway mark, the rest of the band kick it up a notch, a saxophone solo accompanied by faster, more pounding drumming, and a lush guitar solo rounding out the song and record very nicely.

Vulture Industries’s new record is being released on the same day as the new Thy Catafalque, and both groups have succeeded in establishing niches containing pretty much only themselves. Assuming the latter group sustain the quality of their last couple of releases, this Friday should be a pretty great day for those that like their metal on the more unusual side, as Vulture Industries are certainly rising to the occasion with Ghosts From The Past.