Review by Adam M on December 14, 2018.

Deceased perform a form of death metal that is heavily influenced by old school acts, but brings modern presence to the table. There is the theatricality of a King Diamond release combined with the old school death metal of a Dismember or Entombed album. The entire thing is very colorful.

There are a number of guitar riffs present and these are always performed as magnificently as possible. The album gets its groove on numerous times throughout these songs. One gets the impression that an old school album is distilled into a more modern framework with this album as it goes along. As this death metal feeling is created it is thrown into the context of a concept album like King Diamond does. This makes the entire thing more epic than it would normally be and adds to the appeal of the work. The album isn’t perfect, however. It is one upped by the theatricality of King Diamond at times and the death metal has been performed better as well. While it might not be the perfect death metal record, there are so many things to like with this release that you won’t help but become attached to it. If the band brought a more modern production job to the mix and made this have more impact it would be even more viable.

As it stands, Ghostly White is a classy old school death metal release that has some slight thrash tendencies here and there. It comes recommended to fans of the band’s previous material as well as those that like their death metal given an epic and riff-centric feeling to it. This album does have an atmosphere and it adds to the ghostly nature of the album. When all is added up, we have a strong album on our hands.

Rating: 7.7 out of 10

Review by Adam M on December 14, 2018.

Deceased perform a form of death metal that is heavily influenced by old school acts, but brings modern presence to the table. There is the theatricality of a King Diamond release combined with the old school death metal of a Dismember or Entombed album. The entire thing is very colorful.

There are a number of guitar riffs present and these are always performed as magnificently as possible. The album gets its groove on numerous times throughout these songs. One gets the impression that an old school album is distilled into a more modern framework with this album as it goes along. As this death metal feeling is created it is thrown into the context of a concept album like King Diamond does. This makes the entire thing more epic than it would normally be and adds to the appeal of the work. The album isn’t perfect, however. It is one upped by the theatricality of King Diamond at times and the death metal has been performed better as well. While it might not be the perfect death metal record, there are so many things to like with this release that you won’t help but become attached to it. If the band brought a more modern production job to the mix and made this have more impact it would be even more viable.

As it stands, Ghostly White is a classy old school death metal release that has some slight thrash tendencies here and there. It comes recommended to fans of the band’s previous material as well as those that like their death metal given an epic and riff-centric feeling to it. This album does have an atmosphere and it adds to the ghostly nature of the album. When all is added up, we have a strong album on our hands.

Rating: 7.7 out of 10

Review by Vanass on June 5, 2020.

Once you get the opportunity to throw a view at the cover of this release, it should become painfully obvious that some flaws have to come along. No matter how much they tell you not to judge a book by its cover, do it! By having such a gory and sinister cover art, one should expect pure death metal with tendencies in a direction that leans into the filthiest corners of this great genre. What we got instead is a mish-mash of genres ranging from clean melodic death metal and something that resembles metalcore to slightly refined brutal death metal with some black metal around the edges.

A praiseworthy thing about this release is the production quality that simply cannot be described as anything less than top-notch; the guitar sound is as clean as Obama's history, the vocals completely understandable and the drums would make me come in my pants in a better context. To continue with the good stuff, we have to mention the incredible vocal performance of Thaddeus Riordan. The guy is simply a high-skilled giant who knows his job very well and seemingly puts off an amazing performance without much effort. His repertoire of different tonalities and generally the swapping of the “voices” he utilizes, simply impressed me and held me entertained throughout the whole listening process.

Luckily, the vocals aren't the only enjoyable thing to be encountered here. The incredible performance of Casey Leblanc, the gentleman behind the drums, was perfectly underlined by the high-quality production. If you are a fan of fast music, this is the guy you need, his blast beats are precise, always on the right spot and dictate a decent tempo. Once you hear this album from beginning to the end, a simple pattern will show up; if it's fast, it's good. And rightly so as it seems to be one of the stronger elements in the music of these gentlemen from Louisiana.

And now the bad news... As much as I am impressed and have to admit that the drumming infused so much life into the guitars, I have to say also that much of it simply got lost in the aforementioned mishmash. Both guitarists wrote riffs that if they were to be heard isolated would sound great, yet ultimately fail to achieve any sort of harmony when put on the same track. It almost seems like they got distracted by the attempt to achieve high niveau of technicality, which they surely have, but not necessarily in a good way. There were simply too many curves in their music and not many of them made too much sense. They switched tempos seemingly arbitrarily, went from melodeath riffs to brutal death metal, and then continued towards some riffs in the style of good old Immortal. All these details resulted in discord, which made the whole thing relatively forgettable to me.

Admittedly, not everything is so black, there is one track that stood out to me personally. It is the fifth track and it's called 'Fear The Worst', which could be described as Arch Enemy meets Seigneur Voland on some dirty death metal ground. The song is actually an example that the guys are actually quite able to direct their taste and technical skills into some good songwriting and thus actually make music that is worth remembering.

As a whole, these guys certainly do not deserve to be forgotten that easily because they are pure professionals with their instruments. It is certainly enjoyable in some ways, but as a whole, this release is pretty mediocre, and I would certainly abstain from recommending it if it weren't for the amazing vocals and the drumming. Thus, I would advise you to watch what these guys are doing, someone who can play his ass off with such intensity will certainly release a killer record in no time.

Rating: 6 out of 10