### Blinded In Bliss: Constancy

#### 08/01/13 || Pr0nogo

Here we have yet another case of mislabeled records and bands. Blinded in Bliss is a metalcore band marketed as melodic death metal, and while they might have some melodic influences, their -core influences stick out like a prominent cockrod. When all I can hear is flat, pro-tooled production and copy and paste lyrics that were so obviously taken from every hardcore band in the history of the universe, it makes it hard on my ears to remember that I’m listening to something in the first place. “Constancy” is unfortunately just another boring record amongst a sea of dull and unalluring garbage.

Things start off bad and go pretty much straight to worse with the first track, “Born into Bondage”, which is ostensibly about the twin vocalists’ African lineages. While they’re not quite as annoying as Chelsea Grin, they are entirely vapid and dull in their performance. It’s almost depressing as they do their very best to emulate everyone else in the hardcore genre. One vocalist builds his role in the band entirely around the typical middle-pitched hardcore scream, and the other chimes in with some generic cleans while the first guy catches his breath. When the production isn’t busy making the album sound like a fuzzy, artificial, emotionless mess, there’s some layering of their vocals. That’s it. That’s Blinded in Bliss’ sense of versatility. Needless to say, their performance was stale before I pressed play.

Boring vocals give way to boring guitars. The instrumentation of “Constancy” accomplishes a musical feat I haven’t encountered since my time listening to Between the Buried and Me: they sound so much like everything else in their genre that the entire album dissolves into an ocean of boredom. I wasn’t joking when I said that I sometimes forgot I was listening to an album. “Constancy” is THAT dull. The guitars can be described with words such as “predictable” and “generic” (do you see a pattern here?), as even though the melodic leads require at least some semblance of skill, the songs are almost entirely formed of one-note passages and simple riffs that go absolutely nowhere. When listening closely to the guitars, I first thought, “This reminds me of Odium!”. I quickly realized that it reminded me of every band that included even a little melody with their music in a failed attempt to juxtapose artful song structuring with hardcore music.

What about the drums and bass? The drums pick up speed in the way you’d expect them to, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s exactly like everything else in the album in that it offers nothing new to the genre. Oddly enough, though, the drumming is the closest link this band has to a death metal labeling: it’s comprised almost entirely of excessive double-bass play and the occasional blast beat, and doing almost nothing of value for the sound when it’s not doing one of those. While it’s by no means versatile and it requires very little notable skill to pull off, it’s at least consistently heavier as opposed to being very breakdown-oriented. As for the bass… Let’s just say that if there is one, I can’t hear it.

In the end, Blinded in Bliss is yet another metalcore band, and “Constancy” is yet another metalcore record. Nothing separates either of them from mediocrity. They might get a few points for not including breakdowns and downtuned guitars at every turn, but that doesn’t count for much when the album is still a smoldering pile of vapid nothingness. This record is fucking disgusting in just how generic it really is. If you’re into this kind of stuff, all the power to you, but don’t label it “death metal”. That shit just doesn’t fly with me.

- Information
- Released: 2012
- Label: Self-released
- Website: http://blindedinbliss.ca
- Band
- Björn “Speed” Strid: vocals
- Rudy Martinez: vocals
- Brian Leger: rhythm guitars
- Baron Pierce: guitars
- Pat Kavanagh: bass
- Bill Fore: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Born into bondage
- 02. Deliverance
- 03. Brothers to arms
- 04. Constancy
- 05. Destitution
- 06. Affinity
- 07. The idea of poverty
- 08. Washed away
- 09. Factors affect