The Ghost Inside – Get What You Give

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The Ghost Inside have quietly built up a nice name for themselves within the metalcore circle; and with Get What You Give being their first album on new label Epitaph Records, fans might feel like they’re primed to make the jump to the big leagues. The album has certainly been pushed as just that; The Ghost Inside‘s ‘big’ (well, bigger at least) label debut, so it’s safe to say that the album has a bit of hype to live up to. How does Get What You Give handle it? Well…not as well as it probably could have.

Get What You Give is a near perfect example of an album where the good songs are so much better than the bad songs that it makes you just scratch your head in disbelief. The album starts off quite well actually; the opening track “This Is What I Know About Sacrifice” is appropriately up-tempo and in your face. It’s about what you’d expect from a band like The Ghost Inside, wasting absolutely no time getting the party started. Unfortunately albums don’t just get reviewed based on how good their first track is; and by far the biggest problem with Get What You Give is the inconsistent nature of the album itself. “This Is What I Know About Sacrifice” and “Outlive” sound like they were written by completely different bands from songs like “Engine 45” and “Dark Horse”; and while neither of the latter two songs are outright bad (“Engine 45” does approach the upper levels of cheesiness at times with it’s clean singing, though) it’s quite jarring when transitioning from one song to another.

It also sounds like The Ghost Inside has a little bit of a problem with what exactly their sound is, at least on this album. Some songs are straight-up metalcore, while other songs take a “melodic hardcore” angle. This wouldn’t be much of a problem if The Ghost Inside was just able to blend the two styles together better on  Get What You Give. More songs like “Thirty Three” would have gone a long way in changing my opinion on this aspect of the album; as it stands now the majority of the songs offer such a big divide between the two styles that you’ll instantly notice the transition, which takes you right out of “the moment” if you catch my drift. For every “Thirty Three” or “Face Value” on Get What You Give that successfully blends the two styles, are songs like “The Great Unknown” and “Deceiver” that are honestly just completely forgettable in almost every way possible. Production wise The Ghost Inside sounds fine, although that doesn’t really help it out much. It certainly doesn’t help that neither the guitars or drums offer up anything special; a vast majority of the riffs you’ll hear on Get What You Give are completely forgettable while the drums just languish in the background like a forgotten step-child.

At the most, two or three songs help save Get What You Give from being a total disaster. Chances are after the first listen, you probably won’t find a reason to go back and listen to the album again.