A pretty solid album... but...
Luke M. Meade | USA | 11/18/2009
(3 out of 5 stars)
"If you are as much a fan of A Storm Of Light's debut as I am, you have probably already made up your mind to purchase this, and I don't discourage you from doing so. If you haven't yet listened to "And We Wept the Black Ocean Within," start there. In AWWTBOW, A Storm of Light created a sound that wasn't entirely new/unique, but was refreshing at the same time. It didn't really do anything that you can't find elsewhere in Neurosis, post-metal, etc. But it's a satisfyingly heavy, crushing, arrhythmic-esque pulse of guitar sound and a little synth here and there, complimented solidly but anticlimactically by classic stoner-doom type vocals that never really changed. Don't get me wrong, it was a good album; but it had moments where the music would reach a crescendo, and the mind was left begging for a crashing outburst of some type, but then the crescendo just faded away.
How is this relevant to "Forgive us our Trespasses," you ask? Well, it seems that A Storm of Light figured out all those moments where the music should have exploded, then recorded the explosions, stretched them out far enough to fill an entire album, then gave it a name- "Forgive us Our Trespasses." It's as though all those loud, crashing moments that we were left salivating for by the first album were packed onto this one. Because of this, FUOT comes off as a little power-ballad-like, and lacks what the first album was all about- being crushed under infinite depths of blackness in an ancient peat bog. If that isn't enough, there are three tracks in the album where we hear a quasi-evil curdling voice recite some sort of trite prose about humans destroying the earth and their well-deserved punishment that comes off as a bit tongue-in-cheek to me, given the sobriety of the rest of their music.
Why three stars, you ask? Because AWWTBOW deserves four stars, and this isn't as successful. Anyway, if you liked AWWTBOW, just go ahead and get this. You're going to anyway because you can't understand how another A Storm of Light album could be bad, and maybe you're right. If you haven't heard AWWTBOW, buy that album first, to see what A Storm of Light is really about."
