Label: Escape Records
Release date: September 29, 2023
Produced by: Simon Jovanovič
Album length: 53.34 min
Genre: Progressive Metal/Heavy Metal
Rating: 10/10
Dino Jelusić needs no special introduction. In a short time, the Croatian hard rock and heavy metal singer has climbed into the select handful of the most respected vocalists of the current generation, and that landed a permanent spot with none other than Whitesnake. That says it all. Coverdale has always picked only the best of the best.
Going by that first paragraph, you’d think Jelusick are an updated hard rock revival crew, but that’s not the case. They’re a lot sharper and pointier than anyone might expect. Metal-bitten, too. The opener Reign Of Vultures lays out the whole point of Jelusick right away. You won’t go far wrong if the way this track plays out makes you think of progressive metal. It follows that “Follow The Blind Man” is a beast of its own kind, and that Jelusick are a different musical story altogether, with a recognizable musical identity of their own.
Jelusick are a quartet. No special guests. Given Dino’s reputation, it would have been easy to lure some in, but that didn’t happen. So “Follow the Blind Man” is a work of quartet purism at 110% output. The musicians surrounding that mighty, piercing and above all wildly catchy voice, the kind that crawls right under your skin, have been technically honed to perfection. Even though this is a debut, you can feel that the crew has been together for a long time and that everyone involved has some serious mileage on the musical road. A good 53 minutes of music is laid down on the record in truly top-notch fashion. The tracks come with perfectly crafted songwriting. The graduated build-up of mood from verse through pre-chorus into chorus is there the whole way. The quartet breathes on the same frequency. In sync. But “Follow the Blind Man” is a seriously dark album. In tune with the times we live in, and with the way humanity is, it seems, charging headfirst and unstoppably straight into the bosom of the apocalypse.
“Follow the Blind Man” blends what are basically classic elements of hard rock and heavy metal, but with an (expectedly) modern approach to both production and songwriting. The phrasing hits violently in places. With a lever of occasional aggression in the guitar riffage that aims even toward thrash metal (Died, Chaos Master). Since Dino’s voice, in its timbre and in how the vocal lines are handled, is comparable to Russell Allen of Symphony X (and occasionally to Jorn Lande), and since the material is at times wildly dynamic (optimally detailed and polished), the album stacks up, track for track, even against the later work of Symphony X and the latest solo records of Michael Romeo. The mix of material on the album is remarkably vivid, varied and special. So, put simply, this album impresses in one word. From start to finish. Every single second. In the compositions, the quartet has channeled the creative currents so that each individual talent shines with huge intensity and gets to flourish at full tilt. On the individual level, that is. Sure, Dino’s authoritative voice is front and center throughout, but the guitar work delivered by the out-of-the-ordinary guitar virtuoso Ivan Keller is no less stunning.
The album has an exceptionally live-sounding production. An organic warmth to the sound. It feels like the tracks were recorded in the studio the way you’d play a concert. The band cut the album at the Evolucija studio in Ljubljana, under the production baton of Simon Jovanovič.
The track order is subtly planned. The title track counts as one of the album’s peaks. A mid-tempo, at times balladic mini-epic suite, loaded with melancholy and pompous “drama theater”, it has a mid-eight passage with a ferocious guitar erection of jaw-dropping soloing that jumps you into a world of mysticism and imagination, a top-notch atmospheric detour, and as a composition it’s a kind of masterpiece of this debut, easing off the fiercely dark aggression of the album’s first three tracks. In the second half, The Healer plays a similar role to the title track, one of the album’s easier-to-remember tracks, and the way out at the very end feels fantastic, marked by the closing piano ballad The Great Divide, where Dino coaxes out of the voice that deliberately recognizable, smoky Coverdale charm. Yes. The songs are wildly dynamic. They bend under the weight of how finely worked they are. From atmospheric leaps to motif twists, modulations and transitional bits. That’s why “Follow the Blind Man” demands a fair number of spins before it sinks in as a whole. But once this album gets under your skin, you’ll be consuming it with great pleasure for a long, long time. Hence the observation that it shamelessly flirts with progressive metal elements the whole time.
The debut “Follow the Blind Man” isn’t just another album. It’s an exceptional cornerstone of the band’s career. On it, the group presented a DNA all its own, one it will follow in the future and keep nurturing and building on. As mentioned, “Follow the Blind Man” carries enormous power and the swagger of a sculpted, confessional art character, and given that we’re talking about a debut, it’s an unambiguous candidate for metal debut of 2023. A brilliant piece of work. Nothing needs to be added, and even less needs to be taken away.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Reign Of Vultures
2. Died
3. Animal Inside
4. Follow The Blind Man
5. What I Want
6. Acid Rain
7. Healer
8. The Great Divide
9. Fly High Again
10. Chaos Master
11. The Bitter End
Lineup:
Dino Jelusick – vocals, keyboards, arrangements
Ivan Keller – guitar
Luke Broderick (Luka Brodarić) – bass
Mario Lepoglavec – drums
