Sweden's Nu-Kristianz (Blindside - Blindside)

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Blindside - Blindside
Date:	23/02/08 (11 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A less aggro-centric Slipknot with slightly more musical ability.

Disadvantages: Nothing original, merely an obvious smorgasbord of influence.

Blindside's career has seen the Swedish Christians move from generic and annoying hardcore to bland and tedious post-hardcore, with very little of note in-between. This first album is surprisingly one of their better releases, still enormously let down by its reliance on Slipknot-style vocals and loud guitars with delusions of heaviness, but taking enough shameless influence from other bands that the album experience is at least not entirely uninteresting.

The Slipknot comparison is more evident in the vocals than anything else, which really do sound like a passable and suitably irritating sound-alike in their whining singing and predominant yells, electronically distorted as these hardcore bands tend to lack the genuine screaming ability found in metal bands. These vocals are supplemented by very dull guitars based around power chords in songs like 'Invert,' 'Nerve' and 'Replay,' while the rest of the album experiments with theft of other 1990s bands' styles in a continuing process of experimentation to find the right sound to rip off, something that arguably should have been carried out prior to actually recording such a revealing album.

Thus, we hear the familiar funky, bass-driven style of Korn in 'Superman' and 'Liberty,' the gloom of Tool in 'Empty Box' and 'This Shoulder,' and the generic sound of grunge making its way into 'Born,' 'One Mind' and 'Teddy Bear,' featuring faux-acoustic guitar before the whole thing returns to cacophonous yelling. The listener's own personal preference when it comes to these obvious influences will likely determine their own favourites here, or in my case least despised, as the Tool-like 'Empty Box' is at least structurally interesting in its mellow minimalism, though I never liked Tool that much either. This is the sound of a band struggling to find its feet and recording the struggle for all to hear, adding some Christian platitudes to encourage us to be forgiving.

1. Invert
2. Born
3. Empty Box
4. Superman
5. Nerve
6. This Shoulder
7. Replay
8. One Mind
9. Liberty
10. Daughter
11. Teddy Bear
12. Never

Summary: Blindside's first album (1997).