Get What You Give

With its third studio album (and its first for Epitaph Records), the Los Angeles metalcore quintet The Ghost Inside gets an upgrade in production and a noticeably beefier brawn to its already-muscled music. Singer Jonathan Vigil comes out swinging on the one-two punch opener, “This Is What I Know About Sacrifice.” It\'s a minute and 29 seconds long, wherein he howls: “I’ll see you at the crossroads!” The following “Outlive” erupts with a rhythm section that sounds like a stampede of elephants rushing a minefield. Vigil’s throat-shredding bellows get even more serious, but that\'s in part what helped the band inadvertently forge a hardcore subgenre that’s jokingly called “srscore.” The introduction of “Engine 45” boasts great guitar work by guitarist Aaron Brooks, who dynamically shifts from face-punching chug-riffs to ascending arpeggios in a heartbeat. Brooks also handles the unscreamed vocals throughout *Get What You Give*, adding a boyish tone and a dynamic contrast to Vigil’s blistering esophagus destruction. The Ghost Inside improves on Linkin Park’s balance of melody and chaos in the outstanding “Face Value.”

Get What You Give, the third studio outing from L.A.-based metalcore outfit the Ghost Inside, is spearheaded by the brutal anthemic single "Outlive," which blends the raw, thunderous despair of "Institutionalized"-era Suicidal Tendencies with the relentless sonic crush of contemporaries like Bring Me the Horizon and the Devil Wears Prada.

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