Touched By Ghoul Provides The Perfect Halloween Fright Night
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 30, 2014 3:15PM
Touched By Ghoul's music sounds like a vicious shriek from a nightmare dimension, so it's fitting they're playing The Empty Bottle's Halloween show tomorrow. Many Chicago venues have beaten the Halloween cover band thing to death, so it's refreshing to see a truly scary line-up including a band that creates sounds of terror laced with beauty.
Singer and guitarist Angela Mullenhour is probably known to most as the voice of Chicago's Sybris, but in Touched By Ghoul she takes both levels of her range—the breathy whisper to the howling yowl—to new extremes as she slashes away at her guitar. Andrea Bauer's guitar and Alex Shumard's bass playing teeters between extremes as well, building to swells that support the music even as it crashes down around them. The band creates a racket that is so muscular and titanic we have actually felt ourselves rolling back on our heels trying to keep balance during their sets. The band themselves get so drawn into this maelstrom that there are times drummer Paige Sandwich can't help himself and stands up behind his kit, screaming back up vocal sans microphone and further adding the the swell of sound.
The band has yet to release a proper full length, but their debut EP has been out for a while now and you can stream or download it below. Then you can snag tickets to tomorrow's show that also includes Bloodiest, Outer Minds, and Child Bite.