Broken by Deflecting Ghosts: Review

by admin June 4, 2025

June 4, 2025

Deflecting Ghosts’ latest single, “Broken”, is a reckoning, and a battle cry wrapped into four-and-a-half minutes of raw, melodic power. Released on May 23rd, the Kansas-based trio’s first full-band track introduces listeners to the haunted inner world of someone grappling with the fallout of addiction and the ghosts of past selves.

The opening moments bring eerie, shimmering guitar lines to snake around steady drums, and Luke Fitzgerald’s deep, pained, reflective voice sets the tone with restrained sorrow. As the song builds, so does the tension.

The guitars blaze into action, drums thunder, and the cymbals crash like distant storms. Luke’s voice rises in urgency, never fully breaking, but always on the edge of something guttural and vulnerable. You can hear the weariness in lines like “Now you walk alone, still jaded from the fall,” a line that the narrator’s trying to convince himself of his own survival with repetitions. The lyrics cut deep, dense with regret, spiritual longing, and a lingering hope for redemption. “It’s not much, but still it’s everything I am” comes to you like the emotional peak with an unpolished offering of truth, scraped clean of ego.

The track was mixed by Adrian Breakspear (known for work with Gang of Youths) and mastered by Maor Appelbaum (Limp Bizkit, Starset), and you can hear the polish without losing the grit. The bridge carries a haunted elegance, with the singer’s voice rising with almost unbearable tension, before a guitar solo scorches its way through. “Broken” sounds like what it feels like to finally admit your pain out loud—and mean it. Stay tuned with Deflecting Ghosts for more impassioned pieces.