Ghost (32) – Impera

Smell the inside of the jacket. What is the smell. I cannot put my finger on the spice it smells like. Tell me I am not crazy.

This record sounds really good. Powerful sound, and a really great pressing. Just a tiny bit of crackle on the lead in, but clean the rest of the way.

This pressing is… okay. The sound feels very closed in, for lack of a better term. I think it’s more down to how the album is produced at least, it’s really heavily compressed and I can definitely hear that in the drums. There isn’t a nice sparkle on the cymbals nor a heavy slam from the kicks, and that’s with the bass set 2 steps higher on my amp than usual. It’s weird too because it’s not pressed very loud either. I can at least say the crackling that’s on the digital version at points isn’t as pronounced here, but it definitely sounds more flat and thin than it feels like it should. It gets noticeably worse the closer you get to the center too, Watcher in the Sky suffers a lot here.

I say okay because somehow, that’s only side A. Side B is fantastic, super crisp with a lot of room for everything. I really don’t get what happened here, they sound like two totally different masters. Maybe further plays will get side A sounding better (might be gunked up from the factory or something?) but it’s really bizarre. Almost as two-faced as the album cover.

Is it supposed to be five or six stickers? Mine only had five.

Did anybody else's copy arrive with no stickers? Everything else is as d but can't find the stickers anywhere.

An album with sounds we didn't expect but opened up another realm of Ghost for us. This was possibly one of the biggest albums for me this year, hearing 3 songs prior "Hunters Moon", "Call Me Little Sunshine, and "Kaisarion" there were definitely amazing but the highlight for me is "Darkness At The Heart Of My Love". Twenties just doesn't fit the Ghost aspect.

Enough with the tunes but to the actual pressing it sounds great. I noticed a slight warp thats not noticeable when playing (speaker wise) but visually even very minimum. The warp could be due to the 24 page booklet spreading the jacket. This is a little lighter weight than 180 gram but still feels great! I would recommend this version of the album especially for the cool 5 pack of stickers featuring Papa, Papa Nihil etc. Go #shoplocal and pick up a copy!