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BLINDFOLDED AND LED TO THE WOODS "The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes Me"
BLINDFOLDED AND LED TO THE WOODS "The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes Me"
By Dr. Abner Mality
Quite a mouthful, isn't it? Ordinarily I would highly suspect pseudo-ironic hipsterism, but a close listen reveals a band that is intriguing with its unpredictability and brutal with its heaviness.
My previous encounters with BALTTW didn't impress me, but this is the breakthrough. It's their heaviest and darkest record but also the most interesting listen. There's no doubt that these New Zealanders are a death metal band but that's not ALL they are. Their songs are complex creations that move from hazy dissonance to tech-death brutality to post metal attitude swings and even touches of doom and hardcore. Putting that all together is like threading a needle, but BALTTW do it with aplomb here.
Vocalist Stace Fifield mirrors the band in that he is restless and hard to pin down. This is a smorgasbord of vocal styles that's all over the map, ranging from harsh shouts to bestial roars to soft croons and everything in between. On "Coalescence", some appealing female vocals are add to the fray. Those vocals fit neatly with the story being told here, which is a concept about obsessive love.
This is an album with so much going on, it's impossible to recap in a review of reasonable length. It is bookended by the two longest tracks, "Arrows of Golden Light" and "Coalescence", which are the songs that experiment with melodic post-metal stylings. But there isn't one song here that stays in a constant groove or speed. Many like the title track, "Compulsion" and "Snow Angels" are blindingly heavy and aggressive, with tech-death guitar flourishes and hyper-kinetic drumming. Yet the band never lose control and every song comes across as well laid out and structured. And the whole thing is darker than the bottom of the Mariannas Trench.
A real breakthrough for BLINDFOLDED AND LED TO THE WOODS, something that will take them to the next level.
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