Released: April 25, 2025
Skeletá doesn’t announce itself with spectacle. It opens not as a declaration but as a broad field of sound — “Peacefield” arrives with resonance rather than thrust, laying out a wide sonic ground before it moves. The guitars and rhythm pull in unison, but there’s space between them, a sense of sound forming around air rather than filling it. That space becomes memory’s first impression.
“Lachryma” follows without a jolt. Its introduction feels like a hinge into texture; the riff and vocal lines intertwine in a way that doesn’t rush forward or backward. It is present, and that present-ness is what lingers. The song settles into your perception not by sweeping it up, but by letting it rest there.
“Satanized” shifts the pacing but not the posture. It doesn’t break the album’s calm logic, it reorganizes it. The riffs are clearer, the momentum more defined, yet the track stays within the same atmospheric envelope that Skeletá has already claimed. You carry the beat forward not because it pushes you, but because you’ve already been paced into it.
“Guiding Lights” enters like a reflection you recognize mid-thought. The instrumentation relaxes slightly without unravelling. Memory traces here come from repetition rather than drama — motifs reappear because they match the album’s own breathing.
“De Profundis Borealis” thickens the mood without thickening the tension. Its riffs have weight, but they’re measured. The track moves steadily, and in that steadiness lies the album’s quiet magnetism. Time with this song doesn’t slip away; it stretches, and your recollection of it stretches with it.
Cenotaph continues this trajectory. It holds rhythm and harmony together in a way that feels organic rather than staged. There’s no crescendo, no peak that demands recall — instead, the song embeds itself in the brain through understated persistence.
“Missilia Amori” and “Marks Of The Evil One” carry forward with traces of melodic familiarity sewn into structural clarity. The album doesn’t chase hooks. It collects them. Each return to the main thread feels natural, like recognizing a step on a path you’ve walked before.
“Umbra” introduces broadened tones without losing the album’s internal alignment. Its run doesn’t surge; it unfolds. The sense of space remains consistent — there is no dramatic exit, only extension, a widening without distortion.
“Excelsis” closes the record by reiterating proximity rather than distance. It doesn’t resolve so much as conclude a cycle. You don’t finish this album with a sense of finality; you leave it knowing you’ll return.
Across Skeletá, production emphasizes clarity and presence. Guitars are bright but not sharp, rhythms are clean without being clinical, vocals are integrated into the mix instead of riding above it. This isn’t a record that presses memory into shape — it lets memory shape itself around it.
Ghost structures this album less like a journey and more like a field to inhabit. The songs aren’t landmarks; they’re coordinates. What matters here isn’t how the record peaks or falls, but how it persists. In repeated listens, Skeletá doesn’t reveal new secrets so much as reinforce familiar contours.
When the album ends, it doesn’t release you. It simply ceases. That pause — not quite resolution, not exactly closure — is the album’s true signature. Skeletá matters because it stays with you by staying true to its own measured pace.
Written by Rob Joncas for DeadNoteMedia.
Artist information and music courtesy of the band.
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