Blunt Blade’s Forgiveness is one of those albums that feels like it was engineered in a lab somewhere deep under Abbey Road Studios with a bunch of old-school rock nerds and orchestral obsessives locked in a room together. It’s a sprawling, thirty eight minute prog-rock epic that’s basically the soundtrack to your existential crisis, but, you know, in a good way. If The Cure and The Buggles had a less catchy, more emotionally serious lovechild, this would be up the ballpark.
Right off the bat, the opener “Sprawling” lives up to its name like a vast, brooding fog that rolls in and refuses to leave. It’s like standing at the edge of a storm, knowing something big is coming but not quite sure if it’s going to smash your windows or just make things a bit uncomfortable. The kind of song you don’t so much listen to as you get immersed in, like you’ve accidentally wandered into a moody film noir but with more synths and fewer trench coats.
This album isn’t afraid to be dark. I mean, it’s really dark. It’s got that melancholic vibe you get from The Cure’s more introspective moments. It’s the kind of music that sounds like Robert Smith’s diary if it was written during an extended power outage. And then there’s this unmistakable nod to The Buggles, not their bouncy “Video Killed the Radio Star” stuff, but their more serious, almost somber moments like “Elstree,” where the synths aren’t trying to make you dance but to haunt your brain. It’s like if someone took the synth-pop blueprint and handed it over to a gothic philosopher.
Tracks like “The Journey to Hope/Esperanza” remind you this isn’t just a doom-fest, though. It’s a glimpse of light in the darkness, a complicated hopeful thing that doesn’t pretend everything’s going to be fine but maybe might be okay-ish someday. The orchestral parts swell just right, the guitars cut through like sunlight through fog, and you realize you’re on some kind of emotional rollercoaster you didn’t quite sign up for but you’re here for it anyway.
And then there’s the title track, Forgiveness, the big, sprawling finale. It’s one of those epic prog-rock sagas that takes its sweet time getting somewhere meaningful, slowly building from a whisper to a roar, ending with a sort of resigned hopefulness that feels earned, not slapped on like a cheesy movie ending. It’s the kind of song where you can almost smell the Abbey Road air-conditioning hum as the layers pile up across its 10-and-a-half-minutes of runtime and you sit back thinking, “Okay, that was something.”
Blunt Blade is clearly a one-person band with serious multi-instrumentalist chops. There’s no lazy sampling here, no “plug in the synth preset and call it a day.” This is real instruments, real passion, and a serious understanding of how to build tension and release in music. It’s the kind of album that feels alive, like a living, breathing organism that occasionally wants to punch you in the feelings.
Lyrically, the album doesn’t shy away from heavy stuff, but it’s smart about it. No cliché lines about “finding the light” or “rising from the ashes.” It’s nuanced, like the soundtrack to a very intense therapy session, minus the awkward silences.
If you’re into progressive rock that doesn’t feel like a nostalgia act; think the brooding intensity of early Porcupine Tree mixed with the cinematic scope of Riverside, all wrapped up in the shadowy, synth-driven atmosphere of The Cure’s darker albums, Forgiveness by Blunt Blade is well worth your time. Imagine if the emotional depth of Steven Wilson’s solo work collided with the vintage, eerie synth textures of The Buggles’ more serious tracks like “Elstree,” and you start to get a sense of the album’s vibe. The guitars aren’t just instruments here; they’re wielded like emotional scalpels, slicing through the haze with precision and raw feeling, reminiscent of Radiohead’s more introspective moments or even the haunting, layered guitars of Nick Drake’s quieter work.
Forgiveness by Blunt Blade isn’t just music you listen to; it’s something you experience, as cliché as that may sound. It seeps into your consciousness and lingers like a ghost humming melancholic tunes while you go about your day, tugging at your thoughts in unexpected moments. It’s the kind of album that demands patience and attention, rewarding you with a complex emotional journey rather than quick, disposable hooks.
In an era where much of today’s music is designed to be consumed in bite-sized, forgettable pieces, Blunt Blade makes the bold choice to slow things down and ask for something deeper on Forgiveness. The album invites you to reflect, not just on the music itself but on the concept of forgiveness, both the act of giving it and the more-often-than-not harder process of receiving it. That exploration, dark and uncertain as it can be, is a rare and powerful thing in modern music. Whether you find that terrifying or comforting likely depends on where you are in life, but either way, you won’t be able to turn away once you start listening.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
