Published: November 2014

This one-man project from Germany, which was established just in 2011, has already released their fourth full-length album last year. It is important to mention that the one and only band member Argwohn from Hamburg plays in another four projects, whose genres vary from DSBM/Shoegaze to Pagan/Folk Metal, thus it would be foolish to doubt the abilities of this musician.

In internet resources Galaktik Cancer Squad is labelled as a Progressive Black Metal band. Though I really don’t argue about such a tag, the more that I personally write on such a genre and this band is that “progressive” has nothing in common with indefinite connotation - you simply won’t hear any odd and various interludes as it is in Ihsahn or In Vain music; also there will not be any of the technical chaos, like Deathspell Omega or representatives of Dark Ambient and Industrial Blut aus Nord. All in all, that word “progressive” means just more sophisticated structures of the songs, deeper and better expressed atmosphere, bigger amount of clear instrumental music, perhaps it is quite reminiscent of the famous Progressive Metal celebrities, but all this never betrays its Black Metal core. Even those long and almost lyrical guitar interludes rarely achieve the impression of Post-Rock and Black compound, which is so popular nowadays. However, this progressiveness is often formed with the assistance of keyboards; sometimes the guitars are just stuck in same chime, whereas the songs, as mostly in such music, they slackly conjoin to the body of music. Thus, totality is sentenced to be evaluated by sensing just impressions and creating quite an eclectic palette of impressions.

Anyhow, seeing that the reviews on the internet are really favourable, often naming this album as epic, frenzied, raising the band to the top, besides that, an overall picture doesn't leave any specific impression - you won’t find any unheard stuff, the general energy of the album is truly heterogeneous and dependent on quite artificial, yet quite ductile sound. I really would like to suggest “Ghost Light” to the fans of Progressive Black Metal, but I believe that others could find some better representatives of this genre...