Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Blindead
Label: Mystic Production
Release: year_month
Length: 56:13
Rating: 4.5/5
I feel properly electrified. After a long wait, something so potent has landed in my hands and ears that I get the same craving that ran through my body when I first heard some outstanding release from Tool, then Perfect Circle, and, after Maynard’s epics into the unknown, took a safe and really well-measured dose of the morphine that is Opeth and Katatonia. Miracles happen. After the seismic, unconventional shake-up of Orto bar, echoes of exceptional moments spent in the company of the atypical Polish metallers Blindead keep coming back to my small self. If the name, with that crowned Polish eagle, makes you think of the royal white eagle of Poland and bands like Vader and Behemoth and a whole crew of extreme-sounding names from the darker side of metal, then while listening to the album Absence, written and created under the creative pen of Blindead, you may want to take a moment or two to rethink. Count to ten, then count all the sheep on the (Polish) pasture all over again. Blindead are no new name under the metallized Polish sky. Since 1999, from the epicenter of Gdynia, they’ve been sowing a darker note of progressively saturated post-metal and rock that doesn’t give a damn about the commandments and expectations of the »connoisseurs«, the »crowd«, the »critics« and similar utterly irrelevant subjects of the modern music world. All that counts is pure mindfuck, pure critique and complete nihilism, in form and in name. Blindead pour it all, through their band name and the name of their utterly emptied-out nihilistic record Absence, into a compact release that will make every sincere and devoted Tool head smile and rejoice!
Let me stress that, at least for me, this is an insight that comes a bit late, but it’s never too late to take my hat off to the masters and admit that they’ve made a record that shakes you up and breathes at least a drop of hope into the lungs of an already recession-kitschy, pointless world. A hope that the crisis of values and the worldly mental emptying-out, the ejaculating into nothing, has at least contributed to an aesthetic articulation and musical setting in a work we can call art. Despite the doubts of those who think differently, I believe Absence is exactly that – a work of art that, despite being overlooked and met with silence by the whole universe of »people with taste«, deserves at least a mention on a site that strains its blood and soul into lines that, thanks to the illiteracy and shallowness of the world, will most likely go unnoticed. Mystic Production is a label that sows mystical pearls of revelation, and in October 2013 another pearl went out into the world. After the full-lengths Devouring Weakness, Autoscopia (Murder In Phases) and the much-praised Affliction XXIX II MXMVI, it brings something even more provocative and fitting for the times – the emptiness and surrogate sound of the harmonies of the album Absence, which puts the full stop on the era we feel and live through. Progressiveness simply wafts from every sonic pore of the band, and this sextet of exceptional Poles from near Gdansk spews out a whole spectrum of ambient-electronic-metal textures that make me happy, and, hand on heart, this time I couldn’t care less about the rest of you, not even the dirt under my fingernails. This time the pleasure of the qualitative judgment is entirely mine, and I’m loving every second of it, my dears!
Blindead are a band I can define most easily as an interweaving, a synergy of the unusual energies of the exceptional orator Patryk Zwolinski, who doesn’t carry the whole spotlight on his shoulders. Without the Daath-like playful guitars of Marek Zielinski and Mateusz Smierzschalski, bassist Mette Bassoli, hard-hitting drummer and rhythm man Konrad Ciesieslki, and the cherry on top, the perfect ambient sonic assailant behind the keyboards, Mr. Bartosz Hervy at his synthetic ambient machine, the trip would be entirely ordinary, already heard, and not even remotely as thrilling as it is when it all works in symbiosis. Katatonia were kings, and if, besides those Swedish melancholics, the exceptional Opeth have ever touched you (I’d count to three and give too-quick, premature answers to this fairly rhetorical question), then with Blindead you let yourself sink, while listening, into the dominion of the safe and warm embrace of good, quality music written with a capital M. But the whole thing deserves a detailed introduction and an unburdened analysis.
After the opening with the track a3, it becomes clear that Blindead, steered by the production and ambient baton of the colder, polar pen of Bartosz Hervy, have swapped a throatier helmsman of passion for more thoughtful, sensual contours. Patryk is vocally flawless as he asks, over the crystal-clear, piercing guitar tandem of both guitars, his aching song of the metaphysical meditation of the evening: »Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,/ Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, / While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping / Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, / Doubting, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, / As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door / Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, / And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.« Can you hear something resonant in those verses, in the vein of Opeth’s exceptional lyricist Mikael Akerfeldt? Oh, yes! And after the restrained ambient intro, the goosebumps only spread! The harder-hitting b6 continues the charted Katatonia-style song with a note of melancholic but more distorted pain, while the Tool-like play of bass, drums, keyboards, vocals and explosive guitar outbursts just nicely spices it up and builds on it. Blindead don’t sound half-hearted or empty anywhere, and after the explosion comes the polar static and suspense of the pen behind the track s1. A post-rock or post-metal statement (whatever that “post” prefix is supposed to stand for), with which Patryk breathes his soul, a sign of life and existence, into the lungs of an emptied-out world with the words: »I, I can speak of them / For you, for you / I forsaken fade you … / I want falling down / I, forsaken, fading, nearing void I hold flame down / Of a rainbow / Drowning in the sun I’m reaching out (reaching out) / I’m the one full Of ember sentiments I want her see(sea?) / to be in time The temple In the tempest fire wants desire altered with eternal blame / I pray to / Swear no evil open can ever dwell in me / I am living«. A perfect mantra, complemented by the even more mantra-like vocals of the splendid bassist Matteo, which gives the whole thing a bit more of the charge of some newer Tool record than of something post-apocalyptically puked out of the guts of an already-heard weariness. Think Lateralus and 10,000 Days. Absence sits somewhere around there at that moment, and the story is far from over. After the ambient song of cold, aching, distant, estranged, posthumous violins, it’s time for the continuation and the unraveling. The track e5 is a moment of awakening energies, and in the solar plexus you sense something shattering and shaking. Instead of a first-person approach of personal perception, Blindead observe the world purely from the second person singular, from that eternally present other, knowingly renouncing their own self and ego. After the renunciation of the ego there is no act of asserting a replacement, an alter ego. Instead, the web of the world, where the first person singular, the second person singular or the universe of empty plural entities are all equated, is sonically equalized and discharged, and the world is (re)deemed of meaning and sub-meaning. The continuation with the near-end track n4 is more narrative, almost preacher-like and whispering. »She was always the one and only /Strong / Proud / A mount of stone amid countless stares / She, always lost in reflection so deep and distant, / vaguely disturbing / She, whose gist is hard to define. / Wanted to be properly understood / Consistently lost in a long and stubborn slumber. / She / The wolf mother full of concern and endless vigor utterly sublime / The finger of death across her chest / the fear of the grave rising dreadfully / devoid of children, through tears she spoke / of ultimate conversion / The wolf mother / full of concern / and endless vigor / utterly sublime / The finger of death across her chest / the fear of the grave rising dreadfully / devoid of children, through tears she spoke / of ultimate conversion / And the destroyer came and left her nailed. / She was fading slowly drifting back to her orginal / solemn silence, her extraterrestrial scarlet / evanescing leaving gray debirs full of memories / of unconditional love / Tangled coils writhing quietly and dispersing / in the shadows of the rocky throat the pearl gravel / resting peacefully in its eternal placeforever casting / its light.« I don’t know, but the whole thing gives me a sense of some Morrison-esque undertone that takes me into the universe of the records Strange Days and Morrison Hotel, and after L.A. Woman I launch into a completely Polish version of An American Prayer. Mind you, The Doors never were and never will be a curse that would saddle a band from the new millennium with the label of imitators, miserable interpreters or re-creators of what’s already been heard and seen. The Doors were too avant-garde for anything like that, and even today I dare say that the vast majority of the »connoisseurs« and »true believers« among Doors fans are plain plagiarists and bullshitters with no real idea of what the destructive flame of the great Jim meant and wanted to say. But let’s leave the dead aside for a moment.
What bugs me about Absence is the last part – the album’s intended big finale. After the church bells, Blindead get tangled up in a less potent finale. The track c7 doesn’t lift the air, and in their otherwise technically polished manner Blindead lead the watered-down, distant, estranged, melodic weave of Danzig-like empty flirting with darkness and cold into an Opeth-style séance with the track e2. There the guitar duo shows its full measure of sensual melody and feel for acoustics, and splendid cascades of a frothing dark ocean of negativity pound against the shores of the monolithic world of the newly postulated emptied-out man, while Patryk sings » its this blackness that / Affected you so. / As no one feels safe in the dark / And children in the least. / Darkness is like a dreary and absymal slope of defeat / Like the stone foals racing throught the black ocean waves / Like the stone foals racing throught the black ocean waves …«. The metaphysical leap may be a bit too artful and overblown, almost forced, but overall there’s more musicality and rhythm, more organic feel, than in the world of the band that recently reaped the hymns of praise of the »spiritualized« crowd, even if I poke the wasps’ nest of Soen fans for a second with that. Whatever – I like these Poles … Maybe also because at the end they always have to put on that final cherry on top, the conclusion, the closing thought, which Blindead have so far spelled out across all seven tracks (go ahead and read the first letters of the songs). The closing a7bsence is a downright rustic settling of scores with all the progressive diehards who are looking for just a smidge more before they start giving a standing ovation to this not-so-young and not-so-unknown band. The ending is tantric, Pink Floyd-like, energetically potent, and for some, fuck it, disappointing. In my metaphysical metastasis of the moment, I can’t and mustn’t count myself among them!
Blindead are that gram of beauty that 2013, up to October, forgot to wash up on the lonely, barren shores of meaning and the emptiness of existence. They’re cold and damn selective in choosing the aesthetic materials to show off their sonic might. They’re the voice of the world around us, one that some of us can’t merge with, yet they give this moment of nothingness a perfect value, a perfect note and a perfect aesthetic notation. The frequency of meaning, content, essence, of the very lyricism about nothing and for Nothing is perfect, authentically Polish-nihilistic, and Blindead accomplish their task of writing, recording and pouring into the world something good, exceptional and catatonic, blinding, paralyzing, perfectly and exquisitely beautiful. For this peak achievement, the Polish sextet, with an aesthetic helmsman of perfect musical taste at the wheel of their soul barge, deserves full recognition and truly sincere, from-the-heart standing ovations. As for me, I stress this – if you give a damn about good music, then keep your eyes on this sextet of aesthetes who don’t care about sales or print runs, and who, under their post-metal ambient doom weave of a labeling surface, hide a potential that mere naming, tagging and pigeonholing will never be able to fully pin down. Blindead are a band with the potency and spirit of the great Mr. Mojo Risin!
Lineup
Patryk Zwolinski – vocals
Marek Zielinski – guitar
Mateusz Smierzchalski – guitar
Matteo Bassoli – bass, vocals
Konrad Ciesielski – drums, percussion
Bartosz Hervy – keyboards, ambient
Guest musicians:
Daniel Sobiesiak – cello (tracks #1, 2 & 3)
Dorota Gorawska – violin (track #3)
Jerzy Mazzoll – bass clarinet (track #5)
Rafał Wawszkiewicz – saxophone (track #6)
Production
Riccardo Pasini
Tracklist
1. a3
2. b6
3. s1
4. e5
5. n4
6. c7
7. e2
8. a7bsence
