Review MOUNTAINEER ‘Giving Up the Ghost’

Mountaineer hail from sunny and warm Oakland, California. Formed in 2015, the band has released three albums since then. Bloodletting’, their third album, was published in 2020 and now it’s ‘Giving Up the Ghost’ that again allows the listener to dive into post-rock oriented soundscapes.

Acting as a sextet since ‘Bloodletting’, Mountaineer delivers a balanced and differentiated album. With three guitars, the band has the possibility to create tons of riffs and at the same time display a delicate melodic lead. This leads to songs like ‘Bed of Flowers’, which on the one hand has a hypnotic effect and on the other hand contains the necessary hardness with heavy riffs.

Mountaineer are not a band where high speed is one of the success factors. Rather it is the carried riffs like in the doom-heavy ‘Touch the Glass’, which pushes thick clouds in front of the Californian sun with a heaviness. Who listens to such songs does not need air conditioning, because the cool pinch which the pieces on ‘Giving Up the Ghost’ radiate provides goose bumps. Also on ‘Touch the Glass’ almost endless repetitions of the main motif characterize the song, which can pull you in the spell, but also leads to a certain length.

After working through the heaviness of the album, it is the instrumental and calm outro ‘Giving Up’ that ends the album.

To summarize, Mountaineer have delivered a good and gloomy album. Gloom and melancholy are the basic moods the songs are built upon and transport them well. Doom, post-rock and heavy rock merge on this album to a Gesamtwerk which lives from a basic contrast and the tension between sensitive and loud.