That was the ‘indefinite hiatus’? Not even two years? Clearly the need to stave off exhaustion and burnout was that intense…
With a bit more time, maybe Blind Channel could’ve come up with a more not-shit album name than Painstream. It’s in the song titles, too. Surely this Eurovision-metal band are familiar enough with Megadeth to know that Youthanasia is theirs, or at the very least, realise the pun probably seemed a lot more clever and novel in 1994. Add to that Me Versus Me and Villain In Your Story that telegraph their alt-metal intent in 8K resolution, and it would appear that Blind Channel are back to their old sub-par tricks.
…except that isn’t quite true. Painstream features one key change, namely the departure of co-frontman Joel Hokka (to subsequently launch his own awful pop-metal solo venture). That leaves Niko Moilanen as the sole singer, and although it’s tough to say whether that’s responsible for any shake-up, there does appear to be something here. It isn’t major; Blind Channel still ply an angsty nu-metal / Euro-metal brew that they should’ve long outgrown. But there’s not nothing here, and considering we’re little more than a normal album cycle removed from when there was nothing, there’s a bit of worth there, right?
More accurately, it’s a handful of weird(er) creative decisions that show Blind Channel, if nothing else, fumbling for something of their own. That sometimes manifests back in the Euro-cringe that wouldn’t have been too out of the ordinary before; Youthanasia rhyming “WWE” with “WW3” and the repurposing of a Mean Girls line in Revolution: Now are both worthy of a not-unfamiliar sigh. Branching out a bit more, though, yields a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it smidge of Pantera’s Walk on Me Versus Me, and on No Encores In A Swan Song, what closes on a synth interpolation of Faithless’ Insomnia of all things. Neither of those are likely deliberate, but accidentally landing on something with mild intrigue is better than what Blind Channel have done in the past.
It’s a shame more doesn’t come from that, honestly. For the persona that Blind Channel seek to embody—that of imperious revolutionaries fighting battles both inside and out—they’re rather conservative when it comes to actually doing it. Painstream, the modern pop-metal package that it is, is either deathly allergic to risks or has no clue of how to handle them. With that being the case, Scapegoat throws itself out there. Here, airy production makes up a track-long build, culminating in a couple of seconds of industrial stepping that, even then, ends abruptly. A band with better vision could’ve done something here; Blind Channel (as the name might suggest) are not that band.
Still, if you’re jonesing for some modern metal that demands not a thing from its listener, you could do worse. Messiah is actually quite good as an opener, in a theological lyrical bent and an okay performance from Moilanen. There are few complaints with him in particular, even if he only properly impresses when aping Architects like on Diana or Ache. Otherwise, Stars We See and Into The Void are…fine enough, and Youthanasia and Revolution: Now are stickier than average in their hook-work. Even if there’s not a thing close to real, organic heaviness and meatiness, when has that ever dissuaded the target audience for this stuff?
The fact of the matter is, Painstream isn’t all that good, but merely producing something to talk about is a small, necessary victory. This is Blind Channel ever-so-slightly inching towards a vestige of personality, as opposed to being plucked off the shelf and left to perform unchanged. There’s still a lot of that, but for a band whose greatest uptick came from Eurovision, it’s a miracle they’ve not been reduced to little more than a piece of trivia. Still wouldn’t go wild for this, mind; what it achieves isn’t much when the scene is as clogged up as ever. It’s a start, though.
For fans of: I Prevail, Asking Alexandria, From Ashes To New
‘Painstream’ by Blind Channel is released on 30th October on Century Media Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
