7/10

Love Ghost’s latest offering 'Gas Mask Wedding' is a sprawling, genre-defying journey through intimacy and destruction, a record that thrives on contradiction and emotional extremes. Across sixteen tracks, the Los Angeles collective explores love in all its messy, combustible forms against a backdrop of dystopian chaos and stylistic daring.

The album opens with 'Car Crash', a piano-driven ballad that immediately lays bare the band’s vulnerability. Sparse percussion and raw, emotive vocals transform heartbreak into cinematic tension, capturing the sudden violence and lingering beauty of relationships gone awry. This intimacy contrasts sharply with the second track 'Scrapbook', the band’s new collaboration with The Skinner Brothers. Here, jagged guitars and layered storytelling interweave past victories and losses, crafting a narrative collage that is as reflective as it is cathartic.

Love Ghost’s fearless genre-hopping shines across 'Fucked Up Feelings' and 'Left On Read'. The former merges RnB and grunge, channelling a dark pop energy reminiscent of Prince and Joji, while the latter unleashes pop-punk fury in collaboration with Mexico’s Wiplash, a frenetic anthem for anyone ever ignored or dismissed. 'Sand Castles' and 'Hallucinations' pivot to a nostalgic, California sun-soaked alt-rock, merging grunge, pop-punk, and surf-infused melodies into anthems that feel both personal and universal.

The record also balances chaos with moments of stripped-down reflection. Tracks like 'Angelic' and 'Worth It' (another collaboration with The Skinner Brothers) dig into unrequited love and self-doubt, offering melodic catharsis through delicate balladry and epic guitar solos. Meanwhile, 'Spirit Box' and 'Soviet Ghost' venture into darker, conceptual terrain, blending alt-rock instrumentation with eerie storytelling to explore mortality, memory, and Cold War paranoia.

'Gas Mask Wedding' is audacious, sprawling, and unafraid. It’s an album where heartbreak sits alongside humour, vulnerability meets aggression, and every song feels deliberately placed to challenge, move, and provoke. Love Ghost have crafted a record that is chaotic yet cohesive, a love letter to destruction, a celebration of resilience, and a reminder that the most compelling music often emerges from the tension between beauty and ruin.