Imagine you’re a rock band competing in Eurovision 2021. You’re flogging a sound that’s obviously not what the masses tune in for, but you grab enough public attention to leave a mark anyway. It’s already your first major international platform, and the leverage is incredibly useful for whatever comes next. It’s just a shame that’s a crappy, cringe album with any and all potential shredded to ribbons. Must be embarrassing, right? But enough about Måneskin; here’s Blind Channel, who…oh—their story is exactly the same.
To be charitable, there was never as big a gulf to contend with. They didn’t win, for a start, which immediately put less longterm scrutiny on them, but also their entry Dark Side was so clearly built to fit with the parade of ironic enjoyment that is every Eurovision bill. When it’s the only one of its kind around, even the most bush-league nu-metal like this can get some floorboards shaking. But then came Lifestyles Of The Sick & Dangerous, the capitalising album to prove how Blind Channel’s creative impetus really doesn’t hold up beyond a single song. It’s all here—slicker-than-slick production; bad rapping; worse lyrics; a total dearth of their own ideas; basically everything that’d have a band paid no second thought under normal circumstances, but that the continent’s contingent of Eurovision chasers have built into a prerequisite. ‘Helsinkin Park’ might have been a pithy nickname coined in the event of such a Finnish nu-metal band, but at the same time, it’s putting this on a level with one of the most influential, successful acts of the 21st Century in all of music.
With that in mind, you can almost chart some kind of simpatico relationship between how Blind Channel and Måneskin have progressed. The injection of confidence from within a highly insulated echo chamber certainly isn’t nothing; it’s what ultimately gave rise to RUSH!, where Måneskin were so high off their newfound celebrity that it flew them straight into the sun. With Blind Channel, though, the nu-metal and metalcore they find themselves amongst already carries a frankly bizarre amount of pride of its work. That’s all fine and dandy on its own, but you also need to reckon with how that looks as part of the full package. A lot of similar bands are really bad at that, and it almost never helps their case. As for Blind Channel themselves…well, there’s a line on the song Wolves In California where they say “We’re taking over / Everybody tried to warn ya”, which says all you need to know in that argument. In reality, the more pertinent line in that song is “Where I’m from, the time is frozen still”, because Exit Emotions could’ve been released in, like, 2016 in this exact state.
It’s kind of fitting that From Ashes To New feature on this album, then, when they appear to have passed their particular baton to Blind Channel. Their nu-metal might sound more polished and buffed-up, but there’s not a fresh idea to be uncovered at any conceivable level, something which the demeanour that Blind Channel carry themselves with puts an intense focus on. Any grandstanding feels nothing close to earned, particularly when superficial edginess will take the wheel over considerable, realistic meaning. Where’s The Exit establishes that tone forthright, before its implanted into such banal topics as being frustrated at not knowing where you stand in a relationship on XOXO, or hitting back at doubters-turned-starfuckers on Not Your Bro.
When they aren’t fixated on the facets of life that a functioning human should’ve moved beyond post-puberty, Blind Channel aren’t any more impressive. Deadzone is basically Dark Side again; Die Another Day is the customary ballad about finding something to live for that these albums are mandated to have (completed by perfunctory female presence from RØRY); and Phobia and Happy Doomsday are the all-too-familiar dollops of edge that have had all effectiveness burned away through overexposure. To be fair, the hooks themselves are snappily written enough to counterbalance how empty they are, which at least places Blind Channel at a somewhat acceptable baseline. Bear in mind, ‘acceptable’ is a very relative term; “they’re no worse than most faceless radio-rock filler acts”, is a more accurate summation. Truly, the bar is at new, unassailable heights…
So to bundle all that together, the only thing novel about Blind Channel is where they came from, figuratively and geographically. You’d hope that could be a cool feature to at least sprinkle in, but as the standard European-trying-to-sound-American voice from both Joel Hokka and Niko Vilhelm Moilanen would suggest, assimilating is the name of the game. As such, Exit Emotions is so unerringly dull for it. Bog-standard nu-metal compositions dominate, typically the sluggish, mid-paced thud that’s copied-and-pasted from countless other songs. It makes the fleeting glimpses of quicker production on Keeping It Surreal and Red Tail Lights that much less gratifying; there’s potential to grow them into more within the respective songs that’s just tossed out for no reason. Maybe they’d be too experimental for the clearly delineated bunker lines that Blind Channel have holed themselves up in. There’s no room to experiment or try something new, not when there are long-dead horses to be flogged.
It’s perhaps worth saying, on a marginally more positive note, that Exit Emotions is better than its predecessor. Despite everything working against it, it’s still a less humiliating display overall, by virtue of its total averageness. What that means for Blind Channel going forward remains to be seen, but domination certainly doesn’t seem on the cards. If it were, that would’ve come from their singular moment of widespread cultural zeitgeist, not the fallout three years after the fact. And that really does say it all, doesn’t it? Blind Channel appear to have been adopted into the international rock world purely through exposure, and now they’re here, it’s put on full display how limited they truly are. They’re Finland’s stand-ins for the international acts they’re now on the same field with, which does them no favours whatsoever. Outside of Eurovision trivia and its propensity to keep its performers’ names at least somewhat in mouths, Blind Channel are basically left high and dry.
For fans of: From Ashes To New, I Prevail, Smash Into Pieces
‘Exit Emotions’ by Blind Channel is released on 1st March on Century Media Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
