The Saddest Landscape – “Darkness Forgives” [Album Review]

The Saddest Landscape have been making music for over 13 years in a genre that has seen wave after wave of revival, renaissance, and rejection. And yet they’ve managed to consistently release good music, putting out a slew of splits, singles, compilations and full-lengths. And somehow throughout it all, they’ve gone largely unrecognized. So now I have to inform you: we’re all under arrest for sleeping on this unforgettable release by The Saddest Landscape.

This is an album that takes all the best parts of emo, screamo, pop punk, and hardcore and concocts something that makes me want to be young again. Listening to Darkness Forgives takes me back to a simpler time, when all woes could be assuaged with music and company. This album reminds you what it’s like to be alive and feel the wrath and pain and fear of living, and allow you to swim out into the darkness of its music and drown your woes in its fiery embrace.

This album carries all the urgency and impact that Fight Amp or Loma Prieta manage to bring. Nowhere is this clearer than in the fire that is “Til Our Ears Bleed,” a tribute to Jason Rosenthal, the late frontman of On The Might Of Princes. The guitar work and drums are always on point, no wasted chord, not one spurned fill. Nowhere is there a moment that goes on too long or short. Everything carries weight and reason.

What’s special about this record is the clear expression of emotional power without it being overwrought or sloppy (unlike many screamo bands either past or present). I commend this band for seeking out the production that it deserves. My hat’s off to one of the greatest screamo records I’ve heard in years.

Track Listing:

01. Once We Were Immortal
02. Souls Worth Saving
03. ‘Til Our Ears Bleed
04. Trimmed and Burning
05. You Never Asked
06. All Grace Intact
07. The Fire Between Heartbeats
08. Archival
09. A Heaven of Amplifiers
10. Admitting You’re Alive

Run Time: 38:44
Release Date: October 23, 2015

Check out the album ‘Darkness Forgives’ here.