### Blindead: Affliction XXIX II MXMVI

#### 18/04/11 || Altmer

You can tell from the title that this is going to be a stupid album. The lame Roman numerals apparently represent some sort of date: I have no idea why, but it can’t be good. It looks like the silly pretentious thing some overblown prog band would do. More overblown than the ones I listen to, that is. It’s just mind-blowing to see that bands try to achieve glamour with Roman numerals nowadays. Only The Project Hate is allowed to do that, fuckos. Besides that, they screwed up their Roman numerals, but anyways… I’m not expecting intelligence here.

What is the music on offer? Neurosis-lite, with some more proggy moments. Song two has a sax and spoken word vocals, but the latter ruins the Pink Floyd vibe the song has going on. I’m all for people trying to sound like “Us and Them”, but then they should do it properly. You don’t get to rip off the ultimate rock band like that, sorry.

The vocals are some sort of combination between cleans and Mr. Constipation roars. The roars suck. The clean vox are sort of ok, just like the rest of the music. I don’t understand why people need to enter these shitty hardcore rip-off vocals when they’re trying to do this style of metal. Surely people realize only Scott Kelly pulls it off?

Songwriting isn’t so much existent as meandering structures, but that’s par for the course with the genre we’re talking about. Here and there some interesting interludes pop up. The aforementioned sax song is one, the fourth song sounds like it has some crazy sample over droning noises and weird drum beats. I don’t really get why they are so randomly inserted into the album, but they sound cool alone. I suppose that’s why they’re in there.

Overall, this ain’t a bad album, but it’s so redundant it’s unfunny. Neurosis just does this style a lot better. More groove, more atmosphere, more everything. This isn’t bad, but it could use with some polishing and it could also do with removing most of the stupid vocals. It’s got potential, though. Maybe I’ll like it more if I listen to it more. But I’m bored as shit of this style and I’d rather just listen to bands that do the genre well. And there’s plenty of that around.

Recommendation: Write more coherent songs, make it explicit what the sections are trying to do, and for the love of all that is unholy, stop sounding like you have to take a shit.

- Information
- Released: 2010
- Label: Mystic Production
- Website: Blindead MySpace
- Band
- Patryk Zwolinski: vocals
- Marek Zielinski: guitars
- Mateusz Smierzchalski: guitars
- Piotr Kawalerowski: bass
- Bartosz Hervy: keys, electronics
- Konrad Ciesielski: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Self-Consciousness Is Desire
- 02. After 38 Weeks
- 03. My New Playground Became
- 04. Dark And Gray
- 05. So It Feels Like Misunderstanding When
- 06. All My Hopes And Dreams Turn Into
- 07. Affliction XXVII II MMIX