Review Summary: A portrait of a man with little faith left.
I have never restricted my musical tastes to singular genres, yet there is a time and place where each genre sounds better than others. Simultaneously, I feel music is one of the only ways to express your feelings without speaking. It’s a rather weird benefit to music, as they can improvise sounds and noise to sound adjacent to the listener’s thoughts. With my taste, I preferably listen to ska punk when I’m feeling excited or happy, death metal when pissed off, and then there’s the self-explained emotional feeling. Everyone eventually stumbles across a point in their life, where they stand facing a mirror, asking themselves “Why can’t I do anything right?” I sometimes shake with anxiety, and lie awake in bed all night with thoughts chasing through my head. I imagine subtle and surreal figures that aren’t real and day dream them into reality. Everyone is unique with their feelings, but music sounds different when your mood actually does suffocate too such a low. In all honesty, being depressed has never felt so good without “What It Takes to Move Forward”.
You can try forgetting, but everything eventually returns. Nothing leaves without creating that designated impact on your life. Whether faint or heavy, obstacles pass by a person with increasingly ill-fated choices and decisions. I like to think of these “obstacles” as a bump in the road, one that does its job to give you a nice shock, but then I realize it’s over and continue my drive. Then there are the roadblocks, which give no clear sign to what is ahead, and I’m left to shake my head as I try to find a way to pass by. I see What it Takes to Move Forward as one of these roadblocks, but different in its physical form. I see the album as a man, mirrored in my situation sitting in the middle of the road in front of me. I can’t help but leave the safety of my car to start a conversation with this illusive man. I ask the man why he chose to sit in the middle of the road, lying face down on the pavement. He looks at me with tears in his eyes, and whispers “I want to die.”
I feel exactly the same, but there is no clear way to explain my circumstances to the man before I know why he feels this way. I look down at the asphalt, and stare at the puddle of salty tears right next to the man. Giving up on life makes little sense to me at the moment, especially over such selfish thoughts and actions. I stand there, and speak to the man through a soft outlet of music. I tell the man to move forward, and forget about stopping dead on his journey. Whatever obstacles he faced: verbal and physical arguments with loved ones, the loss of a best friend, or even a thought about what would become of him if he continued; they serve as no means to conclude his life. The album is a constant reminder that there is always someone in the world who will feel the same as you, but they move forward with their fragile lives and end in a better spot.
The man looks at me, and a tear rolls down his eyes. He slowly fades into a cold blanket of air, before the tear a tear falls off of my face into the puddle of similar tears. Learning to feel emotionally attached to life itself is hard, but just think of what others go through to carry on with their lives. What it Takes to Move Forward is a reminder to those who seek the end, that getting past these emotional obstacles can lead to better circumstances. Every pulse pounding lyric and instrumental tone is played to fit the ears, and embrace them with warmth and heat. They recycle the cold in your mind, and play notes and melodies that heat up the brain with warm and comforting thoughts. Not much else comes close to the warm feeling of someone who can feel your pain, the music speaks to you throughout the entire session, as it begs you to let go of the pain and continue. I get back into my car, and look forward. I finally realized, that moving on is all I needed to finding my happiness.
