Unreqvited - A Pathway to the Moon (2025)^{Release ID: 57561}

The second of my most anticipated early black metal albums for 2025 is Ottawa's Unreqvited. I've been lauding this ensemble since Empathica in 2020 and 2021's Beautiful Ghosts was a atmospheric/post-metal marvel. I always appreciated how well the songwriting here was above all else, especially since the band always did it without traditional vocals. Rather than using words to depict meaning, the voice was always used as a complimentary instrument, which highlighted both the brilliant instrumentation/production, but also the focus squarely on the melody.

But in 2024 that changed. "The Starforger" was to be the first promotional single for A Pathway to the Moon and it surprisingly featured spoken word vocals. And while my initial reaction was trepidation, I did come around to them. "The Starforger" has all of the mannerisms that one would expect from an Unreqvited song. But within the context of the album, the consistency just isn't there. For some reason, the heaviness that persists on "The Anitmatter" just does not pair well with the vocal timbre, and it may leave some questions as to how these two songs can be paired together on the album? It isn't that the vocals are bad, but the cleanliness in some of the execution just feels off. Unreqvited have always pride themselves on dreamlike atmosphere, so a cleaner, almost metalcore production can be a huge red flag for some.

Unreqvited are not well known for their pummeling black metal roots; instead choosing Alcest tempered shoegaze for their foundation. And the foundation here is still wonderful. Some of those melodic lines on "The Starforger" and "Void Esssence/Frozen Tears" are enough to make even the most stone faced of metalheads fall to their knees and weep. And they always manage to do it with fantastic production. I know I'll be in the minority here, but I for one really enjoyed the 90s R&B synth infusion on "Departure: Everlasting Dream" (hello Sleep Token) and much of the albums more traditional synth work on "Into the Starlit Beyond".

But where the album loses me is the pacing. I always preface this by saying songs like "Into the Starlit Beyond" and "Departure: Everlasting Dream" will sound wonderful on their own, but as apart of a record, they do fall flat. This fumbling occurs because Unreqvited have too many softer, post-rock tracks in a row and the intensity of A Pathway to the Moon just grinds to a halt. Perhaps this is conceptual; as a matter of fact, the entirety of this album has the perception of becoming consistently slower from "The Antimatter" all the way to its conclusion. But even by those standards, this record could use a jolt of energy interspersed between the final three tracks.

The ending is a stylistically appropriate touch where Unreqvited revert back to textural singing and end the album on an uplifting note. Beautiful Ghosts was a record that found me at just the right time. It was a record that had no explicit meaning or themes, but given my position in 2021, Beautiful Ghosts left me breathless. In 2025, A Pathway to the Moon does not find me at such a vulnerable time, so it's easy for me to criticize it more for its shortcomings. Bur even at its worst, A Pathway to the Moon represents another wonderful album, one that I will gladly take the cosmic journey again.

Best Songs: The Starforger, Void Essence/Frozen Tears, Into the Starlit Beyond, Departure: Everlasting Dream

Very much a tale of two different listening experiences in the same week, A Pathway to the Moon has had a bumpy old ride with me this week.  The first run through was as a result of a late night exploration of new releases on Spotify as I struggled to sleep in a hotel.  In that scenario the rich tapestry of melodic guitars and gazey vocals, soothed my soul sufficiently to send me off on a peaceful sleep.  By no means a backhanded compliment to Unreqvited, this was a good first experience in that particular circumstance.  The second listen through was done in the car driving along a picturesque section of motorway in the north of England.  Again, this was a positive experience. The lushious instrumentation was the perfect accompaniment to the rolling hills of the landscape I was passing through.  My thoughts turned to listening experiences with the likes of Saor as those soaring leads and expansive soundscapes took me back to my early explorations of that group.  It is rare that I find myself being able to make such a connection between my surroundings and the music in my ears at the time, let alone find an album to be so endearing to me under two very different scenarios.

I know what you are thinking now, dear reader.  Why is this rating showing a paltry 2.5 stars if he loves it so much?  The fact is, outside of sleep impaired lucidity and breathtaking scenery, A Pathway to the Moon is repetitive to the point of being boring.  When listened to in the isolation of trying to appreciate the actual album content it is hard not to feel cheated in that the same ideas are just being repeated over and over again.  Tracks more or less are just built the same, using the same notes it sounds like, and as much as I cannot deny that this is really well performed stuff, clearly written by a very capable artist, the performance level is marred by the lack of variation in style.  There is, of course, something to be said for establishing a blueprint and sticking to it.  However, truly great albums need to work at a very basic level first of all.  Before A Pathway to the Moon can be (correctly) acknowledged for its ability to work in the tenderer moments of one's surroundings it needs to be putting down roots, and unfortunately there is little to get entangled with when you look past the aesthetics of the album.     

The overall experience is a little akin to meeting someone whom you believe at first engagement to be really exciting or possessing a large degre of intrigue about their character, only to find after a few minutes that they are just regurgitating the same script that is clearly well rehearsed.  Whilst I cannot go as far as to say Unreqvited are a fake, the interest levels lack much in the way of magnetism to truly keep them an interesting concept.