The Ghost Inside – Get What You Give (2012)

Upon hearing “Outlive”, some fans started to cast doubts upon The Ghost Inside because they thought that Get What You Give would be a step back from Returners. However, that is not the case at all.

On Get What You Give, The Ghost Inside goes above and beyond anything else they had done before. Packed full of spine-chilling melodies, bone-crushing breakdowns, and the addition of a new dynamic, clean vocals, Get What You Give proves that The Ghost Inside is progressing full speed ahead.

The album opens with one of the heaviest tracks, “This Is What I Know About Sacrifice”, which contains one of the coolest breakdowns. The vocalist, Jonathan Vigil, calls out “I gave this all that I’ve got, so take your best shot”, and as he nears the end of this line, you hear a gun being cocked. When the shot is fired, the breakdown hits you (hopefully you dodged the bullet) and its sheer awesomeness will forcefully knock you down. You get a brief three second-long break to pick yourself up off the ground, but you’ll be knocked down again by “Outlive” shortly after.

This is where the album takes on a completely different direction. After two heavy tracks to open the album, there are several melody-driven tracks and three of which feature the aforementioned clean vocals. Unlike For The Fallen Dreams in some of their more recent work, the cleans on Get What You Give don’t sound as forced, aren’t as high-pitched, and they are utilized ‘perfectly’. I was a little bit surprised when I found out that Vigil does all of the vocals apart from a guest spot on “Face Value”, but he showcases his ability extremely well on the two tracks (“Engine 45” and “Dark Horse”) that clean vocals are used on.

Whether you’re a fan of melodic or straight-up aggressive hardcore, Get What You Give will provide you with more than enough to satisfy your needs. The guitar riffs and leads heard on “Slipping Away”, “Dark Horse”, “White Light”, and “Test The Limits” are loaded with melody and the breakdowns on “This Is What I Know About Sacrifice”, Outlive”, “Dark Horse” (this song has it all!), and “Deceiver” are a few of the most massive that I’ve had the pleasure of hearing since my venture into heavier music. In my opinion, the raw production makes the melodies seem more heartfelt and the breakdowns even heavier than they actually are.

Get What You Give is an absolute masterpiece and I urge you all to buy this album when it is released on June 19th, or at the very least, listen to a few of the songs when they surface on Youtube.

As Vigil says in “The Great Unknown”, “Only the strong will survive”. In that case, I guess The Ghost Inside will live on forever.
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By Steven Pongrac ~ Me Gusta Reviews