Review Summary: it rocks and it's a little angsty and it's good :-)
Sometimes, like many people, I just get lost in thought. There's no telling where any given train of thought might take me, whether it's to some hypothetical place in my future or even some place in the past. The feelings that come with me to that place could be feelings of joy, longing, melancholy or simple nostalgia.
I think a lot of music, at least for the person on the listening end, serves almost as the soundtrack for those daydreams and memories. You put the record on and you can feel all that imagery wash over you, described in ways that are nebulous and yet more apt and detailed and eloquent than anything you probably could have put to words in the first place.
Requiem for Innocence is exactly the kind of record fit for accentuating or in some cases elucidating those often nostalgic trips into my head, as it feels from start to finish as if the then-young folks on this record and myself are part of this whole experience together, relating over our experiences with life and love and loss and a subtle fear of mortality that has probably slipped into our everyday consciousness a little earlier than it really should have. That might sound depressing, but like life, I think the whole experience is bittersweet, and sometimes we need a piece of art to affirm our complicated relationship with it all.
I don't have a ton to say about the music itself and I feel that's something that can only be properly conveyed by actually hearing it, but this is really not a terribly original record—I'm sure "emo" is a perfectly adequate descriptor, and nothing all too strange is happening beyond that. You've got a troubled lad wailing over loud guitars and hopefully that's exactly what you came here for. The bass player is delightfully loud in the mix, though, and often ties entire songs together both melodically and rhythmically.
This is not a life changing set of songs for everyone, but if you ever happen to have a longing for charmingly rough around the edges, sad boy rock 'n' roll, this should be higher on your list than it probably is.
