Requiem for Oblivion CD Review

By Heather Dalrymple

I met Steve Jacobson on Facebook in 2011. When Steve sent me this CD, he told me that he wrote it as a project chiseling out his journey from being addicted to drugs and breaking into recovery. Steve has been clean and sober for 16 years! Praise the Lord for Steve!  “Requiem”, as defined on Google, comes from the Latin “rest” and is often used at Catholic masses for funerals. Awesome metaphor! So, I guess you could say the CD is “laying to rest” his drug addictions once and for all.

This CD brought me so much joy, and I recommend it for anyone who is currently in recovery, or even someone who is struggling with addiction. But anyone would enjoy it, or relate to it, in my opinion.  It is a Heavy Metal CD, but it’s not one that’s all “screaming” and it’s not one I would say is “angry”. I really enjoyed it and would consider it “easy listening”. The guitar riffs are amazing, as well as the vocals done by Steve, and Joe Kelly doing backup vocals. Steve also does 8 string guitars. Other band members are: Mike Bryan on drums, Geoff Radziszewski on 7 string guitars. Joe Kelly also plays string bass.

Like I said, I only like a few bands as far as Heavy Metal, but this CD, and this band blew me away. It was surprisingly mild. This CD helped me de-stress. Bravo, guys I’m very impressed. I would urge anyone who’s reading this, please, get out and see RFO ASAP. Support your local artists. Eriesistible, I’ll cherish this CD and I’m sure you will too! When I asked Steve if I could share some of his personal journey he said: “No, I don’t mind. The CD really documents how it felt when I was going through Hell on Earth (oblivion) and the redemption I began to see… then experience.”  Steve is really a remarkable person from what I see.  When people hear the musicians’ personal stories, they begin to care about the musicians, and they wanna hear the music. On the same token, when people hear the music, they wanna know about the musicians personal journeys and it makes them enjoy the music all the more. It will bring you into constant rotating turntable of bringing in more fans to the shows, thus increasing love for music.  I would love for the music to bring us together, to do what it is made to do; to heal.

When my package arrived, it did just that. The front of the envelope said “Heather D-Rizzle”!! I said “What’s that about?” Steve said “That was my ghetto interpretation of your last name!” It’s plain to see that Steve and I both come from the Lower East Side.  You can see that Steve is in that child-like state that makes it so much fun to be in recovery. His package brought a lot of joy and laughter to me.

One of my favorite songs is “Casting Shadows”. The premise of the songs is that drugs took his life away, they changed him, casted shadows over the awesome person he really is. (Of course he probably wouldn’t say that last part. That’s why I’m saying it.)  I actually like the whole CD. It’s a great listen. Just throw it on and let it play. That’s a rare find for me. When you find a CD where you like every song, this is big! Please, check out RFO.

One of my other favorite songs is “God Builder”. It feels to me, like this is where you’re finally out of the addiction and you’re back into being yourself and you’re doing more amazing things than before. What I mean by my previous sentence is, when I was listening to this CD, I was inside a story, like a book or movie.  As Steve said, it’s the story of going through hell, and then finding redemption. If you listen to the CD, you’ll see what I mean. I wish I could speak to some of the other musicians in this band and honestly, I wish I could spend more time with Steve and his amazing girlfriend Crissy Rice. They have been crucial to my recovery, but I’m sure they don’t realize that. One thing I have realized, is that when people are there for you, or even do the “smallest gesture” for you, if you have the opportunity to show them how much they mean to you, you need to do just that. I want to thank Steve and Crissy, and now I would like to thank Requiem for Oblivion. God bless you all, in everything you do. You’re in my prayers.

For more information on the band Requiem for Oblivion visit their Facebook page.