ALBUM REVIEW: The Ghost Inside - Searching For Solace

Released 19 April 2024

Epitaph

Five-piece American metalcore prodigy The Ghost Inside are back again with their anticipated album release Searching for Solace. Since their formation in El Segundo, California, The Ghost Inside has inspired international audiences with passion and determination. Tremendous obstacles never dampened their energy. The band are back and stronger than ever.

The opening track ‘Going Under’ immediately gives listeners a clear understanding of what the rest of the album has to uncover. The track starts really hard, slowly transitioning into a more pop punk chorus with sounds like Architects and Beartooth. The song concludes with a softer outro, with soft guitar and vocals back into a build-up, this is going to be one to scream when the band tours this September with Parkway Drive.

The album transitions into crowd favourite ‘Death Grip‘. Launched earlier in November 2023, giving listeners enough time to hype themselves up after the bands 4-year gap in-between albums. In true The Ghost Inside fashion, the song immediately starts out heavy, not wavering and disappointing in any way. ‘Death Grip‘s pit-ready line, “Don’t need a life line, I’ve got a death grip” is a breakdown any fan of The Ghost Inside should add to their bucket list.

A standout highlight on Searching for Solace comes from the intro of ‘Cityscapes‘. A soft toned down version of The Ghost Inside with mellow vocals until midway through the track where Jonathan Vigil comes in hot and heavy.

Most of the album seems to highlight the use of clean vocals. As we’ve seen before from The Ghost Inside, there’s a lack of clean consistency, with some of the hooks and choruses hitting close to home, while others sound upsettingly stale. Towards the end of the album, the tracks ‘Reckoning‘ and ‘Breathless‘ really do The Ghost Inside favours closing out Searching for Solace with its perfect blend of melodic choruses and heavy verses. Being two of the more stronger tracks, it is upsetting to see them at the end of the album and not where ‘Light Years‘ and ‘Secret‘ are in sequence.

Sonically, Searching for Solace remains unmistakably The Ghost Inside, yet it carries a newfound weight and maturity. Each track resonates with strutted precision, delivering visceral punches with its thunderous choruses and bone-crushing breakdowns. There’s a palpable evolution in their creative process, shedding the predictability for a canvas painted with raw emotion and unyielding honesty, because they came back to who they are.

As Searching for Solace finds its place in many listeners’ musical rotations, it becomes more than a collection of songs; a vessel for reliving moments and embracing emotions, and a true key piece for the journey to self-discovery.

Rating 7/10

Review by Connor Lane

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