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The Church - The Blurred Crusade CD (album) cover

THE BLURRED CRUSADE

The Church

 

Prog Related

3.31 | 33 ratings

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Australian
Prog Reviewer
3 stars Everything about "The Blurred Crusade" is an advancement on the Church's previous, debut album 'Of Skins and Hearts.' The guitar work has more depth and has a clearer sound. Overall the sound quality of "The Blurred Crusade" is better than 'Of Skins and Hearts', wether this is due to better production I'm not sure, but it defiantly seems of a better quality to my ear. Everything sounds that much clearer and has a sharp edge and the vocals are easier to understand. The David Bowie influence is at a peak here with songs like "Field of Mars", which has a David Bowie flavour to it. The song structure is generally more complex on "The Blurred Crusade"; there is more good solid instrumental material here.

Putting all that aside "The Blurred Crusade" is simply a better in depth listen than its predecessor and I'm happy to say that it just continues to get better and better until the band's ultimate peak around 'Hologram of Baal.' But for now even T"he Blurred Crusade" is quite an impressive work, you must overlook some of the less.progressive moments of course you'd expect from a band at such an early stage in their career. I have to say that these embarrassing moments are very, very rare and not too bad, so really they are easy to overlook, and each song is able to redeem its self, thankfully. Whether it is a good guitar solo, a nice following vocal passage or whatever each song has at least one good moment.

One thing I've noticed with Steve Kilbey's style of writing lyrics that he tends to rhyme them very well then, he almost purposely breaks the pattern which brings a feel of frustration and wonderment at the same time. It's not so much on "The Blurred Crusade" but it does happen in later albums. Whether Steve does this purposely I don't know, but is does give an interesting twist to a song instead of following a set pattern of progression. While the vocals are relatively straightforward on "The Blurred Crusade" Steve Kilbey's lyrics gradually become more and more adventurous and luckily he is part of a band that is willing to explore new, abstract styles while still having a subtle element of simplicity thrown in. Despite my general praise, there are still a few unattractive features to "The Blurred Crusade."

1. Almost With You (3/5) 2. When You Were Mine (2.5/5) 3. Fields of Mars (3/5) 4. An Interlude (3.5/5) 5. Secret Corners (2.5) 6. Just for You (3/5) 7. A Fire Burns (3/5) 8. To Be in Your Eyes (3/5) 9. You Took (3/5) 10. Don't Look Back (3/5) Total = 29 divided by 10 (number of songs) = 2.9 = 3 stars Good, but non-essential

I'd really like to see more people listening to The Church as I personally think they are an exceptional band and some of their albums are simply breath taking, while most others are at around three stars. So what ever The Church album you get you're almost guaranteed to get something half-decent. I'd recommend this album to anyone interested, not half-bad. I highly recommend The Church's latest album, 'Uninvited, Like the Clouds.'

Australian | 3/5 |

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