An album that may cause you to shout “Boo”
Marshmallow Ghosts - Marshmallow Ghosts (2011) – 5.8 / 10.0
Label: Graveface Records
There have been countless holiday records over the years, especially for Christmas. Christmas music is so beloved that you expect to hear it in retail stores or shopping malls rather than the generic top 40 stations that are usually playing. It’s not Christmas for me unless I hear Bing Crosby singing. While Christmas is pretty well covered by countless musicians, one of my favorite holidays, Halloween, goes overlooked. Sure there’s the goofy songs like “Monster Mash” and darker, goth-metal bands devoted to the holiday, but there’s nothing really that you pull out every year to throw on as tradition. Marshmallow Ghosts, a group consisting of members from Lady Lazarus, Dreamend, Hospital Ships, Casket Girls, and Black Moth Super Rainbow, seek to change that with this debut accompanied by an album length video titled “Corpse Reviver No. 2” that may be the start of future Halloween releases.
My Halloween listening up until this album has been dedicated to horror movie themes or various Goblin soundtracks to Dario Argento movies. Since I associate my love for horror movies with Halloween, nothing gets me more pumped for the cavity inducing holiday than some Jerry Goldsmith or John Carpenter arrangements. Marshmallow Ghosts choose to mix things up with instrumental pieces and actual songs with lyrics. Sometimes they work and sometimes they border on being candy corny, almost childlike in their innocence rather than aiming to be scary. Take for instance “The Hearse Song”, one of the better musical tracks on the album, yet its lyrics reciting a famous Halloween poem about worms eating a corpse – the one where the worms eat the jelly between your toes – kills its momentum in being something genuinely chilling. This happens again on the track “All Skin And Bone” that repeats the same worm-infested corpse description, but it happens this time with an old woman that spends most of the song walking to the door of her house to exit (no lie).
The better moments of the album come from the instrumental pieces like “Shrieks” where the group conjures a Goblin vibe with their psychedelic, eerie dreaminess. I’m glad that Marshmallow Ghosts ventured in this direction considering that Black Moth Super Rainbow is a partial force in this project. “Pig Man’s Bridge” comes closest to being a true horror score with its sparse piano that hints at something lurking behind your back just waiting to pounce. I was not able to watch the accompanying album-length “Corpse Reviver No. 2” video that went along with the album, so I’m not sure if I would have like this “soundtrack” more with a visual accompaniment. The band promised that the video was made by true horror fans, and if that’s the case, I’m sure it provided some of the scares and chills lacking on the stand alone album. There are still a few songs that could make it to my Halloween listening though. Perhaps the Marshmallow Ghosts will return to haunt me next year with blood-soaked sheets rather than just white ones.
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