Album
Give Up The Ghost

Gh⊕s††

These moody, heavy and introspective soundscapes are perfect for rainy and dark autumn and winter nights. With dark soundscapes, dreamy textures, and raw percussive elements, «Give up the Ghost» by Christian Attard explores folk traditions and is the third album released under his Gh⊕s†† pseudonym. It’s a collection of 9 tracks recorded in 2021 and 2022 using mainly Soma instruments.
Christian’s Gh⊕s†† project explores his feelings about organised religion and Christianity in particular. He was born and raised on Malta, a small Mediterranean island where the Catholic Church has a very strong presence and still shapes the lives and worldview of many of its residents.
This influence can clearly be felt in the second track “Folk Wisdom,” which sounds as if it was constructed on a mutant church organ in an abandoned and dilapidated church ready for demolition. The third track is more uplifting despite its almost industrial percussive elements, but perhaps not for the faint of heart and definitely not for your devout Catholic grandmother.
“Days to Come”, the fourth track, is more beat-oriented yet also more melodic at the same time, creating a really nice contrast between beauty and abrasiveness.

Track five, “Dead King”, dials up the distortion yet keeps atmospheric and melodic elements between the slow, chugging beat.

The entire album does a great job of maintaining this energy, of combining harshness and beauty into complementing each other to create a greater whole.

While the Catholic Church believes only in the God of Light, this album very much embraces the duality of opposites, of light and dark, of good and evil, just like the older Gnostic traditions that were deemed heretical and destroyed by the Church almost 2000 years ago.
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