Eurovision is a bit of a gamble. Sure, there’s the small matter of performing on one of the world’s biggest stages or turbocharging your career (Måneskin anyone?). On the flipside, you might end up with a humiliating ‘nil point’.
For Blind Channel, though, that risk has paid off. The Finnish band placed sixth when they performed in 2021 with their Linkin Park-inspired single, Darkside, and have since sold out shows across Europe and made their Download Festival debut.
With Eurovision, they also gave the nu metal revival it’s most mainstream moment yet. While we’ve seen a wave of new bands, from Wargasm to Loathe and, more recently, Code Orange, put their creative stamp on the genre’s chug and swagger, Blind Channel’s own take is slick, polished and laser-focused on nu metal’s most basic instinct: fun.
Blind Channel call themselves “the Backstreet Boys of the metal scene”, and, much like their 2022 breakthrough, Lifestyles Of The Sick & Dangerous, fifth album Exit Emotions revolves around the kind of choruses that seep into your brain after one listen.
Opener Where’s The Exit is saturated in glossy, high-end production, with a central refrain that recalls Asking Alexandria’s Alone In A Room. Deadzone and Wolves In California work similarly by osmosis: big, dumb and festival-ready. The influence of Amo-era Bring Me The Horizon looms large over Keeping It Surreal and Red Tail Lights, although, lacking that innovative edge that has kept BMTH relentlessly ahead of the pack, both tracks feel flat and generic.
What Blind Channel do is simplistic, no doubt too simplistic for some to swallow, but when their formula works, they tap into the anthemia and energy that’s made nu metal such an enduring force. Love them or dismiss them, Exit Emotions will only propel them towards the arenas calling their name.
Exit Emotions is out today via Century Media. Blind Channel's UK tour kicks off March 29 in Bristol.
