Blindfolded and Led to the Woods reached fifteen years old.
To mark the occasion, Stace Fifield (vocals), Stuart Henley-Minchington (guitar, Voice of the Black Pharaoh), Nick Smith (bass, ex-Bloodnut, ex-Yarnspinner), Dan Hayston (guitar/synthesizers), and Anthony Coota (drums, Somnium) unveil their fifth album, The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes Me.
The album opens with the disturbing Arrows of Golden Light, the longest track, which first establishes an atmosphere of anxiety before exposing us to a tangle of riffs beneath raw, uncompromising screams that lead the charge. Regular listeners will recognize their rhythmic storm, while newcomers will be amazed by the power and coherence of the dissonant chaos that rages, shifting from fascinating complexity to moments of pure violence or to the lighter but frightening break where the vocalist dances with very soft harmonics that ignite, finally joining Cafuné, which offers a more direct approach. The track is shorter, but still allows itself jerky patterns to highlight the synthesizers before finally jumping into Red, which takes up this unbridled violence and intensifies it to make it visceral, even during the more dreamy moments. We find ourselves trapped in waves of heightened brutality and technicality, and the only possible escape is Compulsion, the next track, which accelerates the movement once again and adopts even more virulent nuances as well as groovy but extremely heavy passages before moving on to the eponymous track, The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes Me. Once again, the band gives us no respite, combining its firepower with an oppressive atmosphere before deigning to grant us a brief moment of lightness under the guise of dissonance, but quickly returning to rage and chanting the name of the song before moving on to the very short Snow Angel. Less than two minutes long, the riffs go straight to the point, placing intriguing harmonics here and there, followed by a heavy final, and we return to darkness with Black Orchids and its elaborate touches, followed by devastating screams that accentuate the lingering anxiety that persists even during the modern break, and which is confirmed by the wave that follows. We note the refreshing solo before the hammering resumes, then Totem takes up the torch again, hitting us with a new wave of determined strikes interspersed with dark, impenetrable layers that beat us down. However, the musicians are merciful and give us a strange but welcome break. The gentleness resonates but does not last, and the vocalist begins to shout a speech before returning to his growls to lead us to 600 Milligrams, which begins with keyboards, followed by guitar and finally the rest of the band, who crush us again in bursts and add ever more vindictive influences. The bursts of laughter are once again very stressful, but Coalescence comes to our rescue with a gentle melody, ultimately better managing its explosion of heaviness and tangled riffs, but we are surprised to discover a rather ethereal passage where a female voice reigns supreme and imposes its tranquility until the very last moments.
Blindfolded and Led to the Woods’ complexity contributes to the New Zealand band’s reputation, but it reaches new heights with The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes Me. No one emerges unscathed from this experience, which is as dark as it is chaotic.
95/100