Artist: Crumbling Ghost
Album: Four
Genre: Doom Folk / Psychedelic Rock / Folk Rock / Doom Metal
Release: 7 August 2026
Label: New Heavy Sounds
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸 5/5 Guitars
What happens when you take centuries-old folk traditions, drag them through the darkest corner of the British countryside, plug them into a wall of amplifiers and turn everything up until the local sheep start looking concerned?
You get something remarkably close to Crumbling Ghost. 😂🌿
With Four, the London outfit return after a lengthy absence carrying an album that sounds simultaneously ancient and completely alive.
This isn’t folk music with a token distorted guitar slapped over the top.
Nor is it simply doom metal with somebody occasionally waving an old folk melody around.
Crumbling Ghost genuinely inhabit both worlds.
Traditional storytelling sits alongside colossal riffs. Psychedelic passages disappear into eerie folk arrangements. Delicate vocals hover above instrumentation that occasionally sounds capable of demolishing a small cottage.
It’s weird.
It’s heavy.
It’s deeply British.
And we absolutely bloody love it.
💿
Track Listing
- Bows Of London
- Bill Norrie
- Valtz Efter Tor Lohne
- Lovely Joan
- Gower Wassail
- Last Of All Sleep
- The Unquiet Grave
🌿
Track-by-Track Review
1. Bows Of London
The doors creak open.
Rather than immediately burying everything beneath enormous guitars, Bows Of London allows the folk foundations of Crumbling Ghost’s music to establish themselves.
Then the weight starts arriving.
Traditional melody gradually collides with psychedelic heaviness, creating something that feels simultaneously familiar and completely alien.
An excellent opening.
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸
2. Bill Norrie
Here come the riffs.
And they’re bloody enormous.
Bill Norrie demonstrates exactly why describing Crumbling Ghost simply as a folk-rock band doesn’t really work.
There’s serious doom-metal weight underneath this thing.
The band let everything breathe rather than rushing towards the next section, allowing every guitar chord to land with maximum impact.
Heavy doesn’t always mean fast.
Sometimes it means massive.
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸
3. Valtz Efter Tor Lohne
Time to disappear down another musical rabbit hole.
There’s an almost hypnotic quality here as Crumbling Ghost lean deeper into traditional instrumentation and melody.
It feels ritualistic.
Strange.
Ancient.
The sort of thing you could imagine hearing while wandering through some suspiciously misty woodland before realising Google Maps stopped working twenty minutes ago.
Probably best keep walking, butt.
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸
4. Lovely Joan
One of the album’s most fascinating transformations.
Traditional storytelling remains at the centre, but Crumbling Ghost reshape the surrounding musical landscape.
Rather than simply performing an old song with heavier instruments, they change its emotional character.
The result feels darker.
More threatening.
Almost cinematic.
This is exactly how reinterpretation should work.
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸
5. Gower Wassail
Right then.
GOWER.
You’ve wandered directly into Riff Report territory now, mun. 🐉😂
There’s something particularly satisfying about hearing this traditional Welsh wassailing song absorbed into Crumbling Ghost’s strange musical universe.
The arrangement carries a ceremonial quality that feels perfectly suited to the source material.
Old traditions.
Communal singing.
Dark winter evenings.
Massive amplification.
All that’s missing is someone emerging from the mist carrying a Greggs bag.
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸
6. Last Of All Sleep
And suddenly everything becomes strangely beautiful.
Last Of All Sleep provides one of the record’s most emotionally absorbing moments.
There’s a dreamy quality to the vocals while the instrumentation moves with wonderful patience underneath.
It’s melancholic without becoming miserable.
Heavy without needing to flatten you.
One of those songs that quietly creeps underneath your skin.
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸
7. The Unquiet Grave
Come on.
With a title like The Unquiet Grave, you already know we’re not finishing with sunshine, confetti and everyone skipping merrily into the distance. 💀
This traditional ballad is tailor-made for Crumbling Ghost.
Love.
Death.
Grief.
Supernatural consequences.
British folk music really was metal before electricity existed, wasn’t it?
Crumbling Ghost transform the song into an enormous, haunting finale where ancient storytelling and modern heaviness become almost impossible to separate.
A fantastic ending.
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸
🔥
The Breakdown
🎤
Vocals
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸
Beautifully understated and haunting. The performances serve the stories rather than attempting to overpower them.
🎸
Guitars
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸
Absolutely filthy when required. Massive doom riffs emerge naturally from folk melodies rather than feeling bolted onto them.
🥁
Rhythm Section
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸
Patient, deliberate and wonderfully heavy. Every rhythmic decision helps build atmosphere.
🌿
Atmosphere
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸
Ridiculous.
Close your eyes and you’re halfway up a mist-covered hill wondering why everyone nearby is wearing medieval clothing.
✍️
Arrangements
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸
The traditional source material is treated respectfully without ever becoming museum music.
That’s the magic.
🏆
Standout Tracks
🌿 Bows Of London
💀 Bill Norrie
🐉 Gower Wassail
🌙 Last Of All Sleep
⚰️ The Unquiet Grave
🤘
The Riff Report Verdict
Four isn’t an album that fits comfortably into a neat little genre box.
Good.
Those boxes are boring anyway.
Crumbling Ghost operate somewhere between folk club, doom-metal basement, psychedelic freak-out and ancient storytelling circle.
And somehow it all makes perfect sense.
The real brilliance lies in how naturally the old and new coexist.
These traditional songs don’t sound like historical curiosities being respectfully dusted off for educational purposes.
They sound alive.
Dangerous, even.
Crumbling Ghost understand something important about folk music: these songs survived because they dealt with enormous human experiences.
Love.
Death.
Violence.
Loss.
Community.
Fear.
The supernatural.
Sound familiar?
That’s basically heavy metal’s shopping list.
So when Crumbling Ghost introduce enormous riffs and psychedelic weight into these stories, it doesn’t feel like sacrilege.
It feels weirdly inevitable.
Then there’s the Welsh connection of Gower Wassail, which naturally earns an enthusiastic YESS MUN! from Riff Report HQ. 🐉🤘
But even without our shameless Welsh bias, Four would remain a fascinating record.
It’s heavy music that feels genuinely connected to something older.
Not retro.
Not nostalgic.
Older.
Like somebody unearthed these songs beneath an ancient stone circle and discovered they’d been waiting centuries for someone to plug in an amplifier.
THE RIFF REPORT RATING
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸
5/5 GUITARS
Ancient stories. Monstrous riffs. Psychedelic weirdness.
Crumbling Ghost have taken traditional folk music somewhere wonderfully dark on Four. It’s strange, haunting and gloriously heavy—and there’s genuinely nothing else quite like it. 🌿💀🔥🤘
:::
Michael is the founder, editor, and chief riff wrangler behind The Riff Report, an independent Welsh rock and metal publication built by fans, for fans. With a lifelong passion for loud guitars, unforgettable live shows, and the incredible community that surrounds rock and metal, he created The Riff Report to celebrate everything that makes the scene special—from legendary headline acts and grassroots venues to rising bands that deserve to be heard.
A familiar face at festivals across the UK, Michael spends much of the year covering events including Download Festival, Bloodstock Open Air, Steelhouse Festival, Firevolt, Plumpton Revival, and many more. Whether he’s battling the Welsh weather on a mountainside, surviving a weekend in a muddy campsite, or squeezed against the front barrier with thousands of fellow fans, he’s always searching for the next great story to share.
As editor of The Riff Report, Michael writes festival guides, breaking news, album reviews, gig reviews, interviews, opinion pieces, nostalgia features, and behind-the-scenes stories from across the rock and metal world. His writing combines honest opinions, humour, and a genuine love for live music, bringing readers closer to the bands, festivals, venues, and people that keep the scene alive.
Michael is particularly passionate about supporting independent artists, local venues, charities, and the wider UK rock and metal community. He believes every band deserves a chance to be discovered and every festival has a story worth telling. Through The Riff Report, he aims to shine a spotlight on both the biggest names in rock and the future stars waiting to break through.
When he’s not writing or interviewing artists, you’ll probably find him exploring festival campsites, photographing live shows, chatting with fellow fans over a pint, or planning the next road trip in search of more riffs, bigger crowds, and unforgettable moments.
Above all, Michael believes rock and metal are about more than music—they’re about community, friendship, and creating memories that last a lifetime. That’s exactly what The Riff Report exists to celebrate.
Proudly Welsh. Proudly Loud. Always chasing the next great riff. 🤘
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