It is something truly disconcerting about hearing Blunt Blade in the dark with the album Forgiveness. The seven-track adventure of the Minnesota multi-instrumentalist does not only cross boundaries, but destroys them, leaving a sonic terrain that is at once intimate and universal, haunting.
By the first few bars of “Justified,” where the singer delivers the incantatory lines in a baritone, and has jagged electronic accents, you realize you are in a different place. Blunt Blade has created an album that does not want to be labeled, blending progressive rock, electronic sounds and orchestra with the authority of someone who has been listening to everything that Frank Zappa, Tool and Radiohead have to offer over the years.
The title track, which is the centerpiece, plays out as a musical thriller in ten and a half minutes. It is a multi-movement excursion that leads you through grief, anger, and a hard-to-reach tranquility, all with a vocal that has a Bowie-like distance to it. Produced, mixed and mastered at the Abbey Road Studios, it leaves each component room to breathe, but retains an intimate feeling of claustrophobia that keeps you on the edge.
The thing that impresses me the most is that Blunt Blade employs ambiguity as its power. Songs such as Hindrance and Careless Acts develop suspended spaces that beg to be reflected upon but not necessarily simple to answer. The bilingual The Journey to Hope / Esperanza, constructs doubt with a suggestion of victory, and that is the main conflict of the album despair and salvation.
Active listening is required in “forgiveness”. It is not background music, but a psychological experience that one gains reward in being patient with and pays penalty to casual attention. It is somber, brooding music that never wants to tell you how you should feel or even where you have been. It is grand, sometimes discomforting, and very needed.
Stay connected with this amazing artist:
Discover our playlist :