Review Summary: Finding peace and comfort in cold and darkness.
An interesting question about music is “How did you get introduced to it?”. This can be applied in general or to specific albums and songs. For me, the answer was often “I found it from a Counter Strike frag movie”. Not exactly a place where you’d expect to find a song from an album like The Eyes of Tomorrow, an album that spends half of its runtime stuck in a depressive and somber atmosphere. Looking back, it’s a wonder how it managed to even pop off on my radar at the time. Being so early in my musical journey and growing up listening to staple hard rock and metal acts like Linkin Park, an album emphasizing acoustic guitar and atmospheric soundscapes like Eyes… should have been a non-starter.
The album opens with On My Own, a song that emphasizes everything that Eyes… will bring to the forefront. The vocals create this mysterious atmosphere that pulls you into its dark message of getting through life without anyone else there to help. This leads into the title track telling the story of a mental patient wanting to leave their confinement but forced to stay by the doctors at the facility. Low synths are used throughout the album to great effect, with low static or tones to add more weight to songs like the title track and Broken Inside. Guitars mostly take a back seat in the album, often time being used more for atmospheric and climatic purpose. The tribal drums of The Scar carry the beat through the most up-tempo track on Eyes… before going into Unfolding Time where the vocals soar throughout the choruses.
Eyes… excels at building up through the songs. Tracks will add more elements to the soundscapes and nowhere is this more pronounced than A New Hope. Starting with only low volume pianos and vocals, every passing section of the track builds up the volume and sounds before letting loose with a climatic third chorus that then slowly fades out. It marks a transition lyrical from total hopelessness to a melancholic hope that things will be better soon. This can be seen in the next track We’re Not Alone, directly contrasting the openings lyrics about having no one to turn to, instead looking to the people we consider loved ones for comfort and hope. Eyes… closes with Sight for the Sore Eyes, solidifying the second half of the albums shift to searching for hope in life rather than dwelling in darkness.
Eyes… is not without its duds and moments that aren’t as memorable. From Lost to Lucid is a basic ambient track that’s only used to leadup to the piano ballad Colorful Minds and The Ripple is probably the weakest song and least memorable cut on the album being only a basic and by the numbers acoustic track, an oddity that thankfully only takes up two minutes of run time.
When I first heard the album in full, I couldn’t appreciate its more nuanced details and atmospheric soundscapes since I was caught up in fast paced and loud metal tracks of my youth. As I said at the beginning, being introduced to an album like this from a frag compilation can be jarring and yet without it, I wouldn’t have even bothered checking this album out. Now nearing a decade since then, I can look back and appreciate Eyes of Tomorrow and how it shaped my tastes in music. It’s a shame this album never seemed to get the attention it deserved but then again, maybe just like the title track implies, it's best to be left alone for those wanting to find it.
