Ryan Tobin’s Purgatory Road is an album with considerable emotional weight. From its melancholic melodies and powerful textures, Ryan Tobin documents his touching story through recovery from substance abuse, PTSD, and anxiety. Through artistry and faith, Purgatory Road is poignant and stirring, as well as musically proficient and thoroughly enjoyable.
Ryan Tobin is a guitarist, singer, and songwriter based in Canyon Lake. The music on his debut album is rich with memorable guitar riffs and tones. Mostly melancholic in attitude, yet reaffirming and reassuring in its power and grandiosity, Tobin’s songs are efficiently written pieces of alternative rock with tendencies to folk and country music, mixed with his warm and personable vocals and heartfelt lyrics for results that find their way easily to the heart.
Rather well-balanced between clean and jagged guitars and song structures, the songs on Purgatory Road are engaging and immersive. Cuts like the intricate ‘Voice 99’ showcase a gifted songwriter through multifaceted song building, while ones such as the title song showcase a more approachable songwriter whose music touches more on the pop side of things with its gentle pace and easygoing build-up. ‘Purgatory Road’ features one of the album’s prettiest hooks and some of the lushest guitar arrangements. A truly symphonic array of clean lines, melodic leads, distorted riffs, and even metal-inspired guitar tracks. ‘Never Be’ stuns with its gorgeous duality of uber-heavy distorted riffs juxtapositioned against the lushest acoustic rhythmic strums.
‘Not Enough’ is one more of the album’s dazzling displays of balanced songwriting. The clean electrics are gorgeous, Tobin’s words and delivery are touching, and the roomy, reverb-laden atmospheres are balanced by an intense middle section that would sound perfectly at home on a Tool album. The lead guitar section directly afterwards is just arresting. The gentle waltz on ‘Running Away’ is arresting. Again, with a perfect balance of heavy and light, the song is another display of Tobin’s outstanding talent for writing balanced and moving ballads.
The melodies on ‘Faded Hallelujah’ are some of the album’s most heartwarming, and most unforgettable. In spite of being one of the album’s simpler and more straightforward pieces, ‘Faded Hallelujah’ is also one of its easiest to love. The melodic tapestry, rich soundscape, and personal, rich lyrics make for a delicately stormy listen. The folkish atmospheres of ‘The Return’, with its roomy drums, buoyant bass, and forefront acoustic guitar placement in the mix, it is one of the album’s most standout pieces, especially with the lovely acoustic guitar solo, soothing and gentle pace, and Tobin’s vulnerable vocal delivery.
A truly gorgeous and heartwarming album from start to finish, Ryan Tobin is showcasing himself as a very capable songwriter and musician with as ear for melody and for an immersive arrangement. The songs for Purgatory Road tell a deep and personal story of faith, hope, and recovery, and do so through rich and involved soundscapes and more than a few unforgettable lead lines, riffs, and hooks. A beautiful album.
