Wrought with the blackest depths of contemporary screamo, Blind Girls has quickly become one of my favorite bands, their newest record only solidifying them in that position. They're easily one of the most interesting and boundary-pushing in that scene now. Send music shit to [ fosterhildingmusic@gmail.com ] or DM me on Instagram.
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| photos stolen from the band's Instagram. |
12 songs packed into less than 22 minutes, An Exit Exists is a breakneck journey through despair, relieved only in glimpses of beauty in quiet, begging desperation. It is thorny, drenched in power chords and chugging delights, and absolutely crushing in every one of its many devastating turns. Not to mention, every striking chord and pounding tom is crystal clear, Sharni's voice buried just beneath the chaos of their explosive riffs. The production on this is incredible.
Dissonance beckons into existence a throbbing call and response between Julian and Luke's chugging and screaming panic chords, diving into technical and mathy riffs beneath Ben's unrelenting blast beats and Mark's shark-bite bass. Short but not sweet, the track ends in a snail pace, grinding breakdown, as crushing as it is igniting.
Loveless is easily my favorite track from the record. Boltcutter panic chords are spliced between full band hits of ground flesh just underneath Sharni's devastated vocals. Julian and Luke's guitar interplay works wonders here--each riff slightly off in their dissonant harmony, panic chords matched by muted harmonics, and arpeggiated riffs outlined with chugs. Mark's sliding bass feels like a throbbing 808 right out of the harshest metalcore, introducing each section.
Blemished Memory speeds with the intensity of a sharpened knife, doused in every smashing three count hit of bass and guitar, held together with rolling toms. Mark's bass takes lead for a moment in a momentary release from blackened imprisonment before the next song.
Less Than Three boasts one of my favorite intros ever, its screaming tremolo hurricane obsessively good before their spider-crawling passage. Some of these mathy parts somehow remind me of early Daughters--speedy, unrelenting and blasting. Blind Girls is fantastic at always keeping a pulse, everything danceable but nonetheless technically impressive and heavy.
Make Me Nothing is Sharni's shining moment on this album, screaming its title into an oblivion of rising tensions like a country before war. "Make me nothing." But, of course, expectations are curbed. There is no big breakdown or climactic ending to appease Sharni's begging, only Julian and Luke's slow cowboy stumble into tonic resolution.
Pallid Mask descends into a slow, post-hardcore-ish interlude, battling against the rising noise beyond its sonic reaches before the second half of the album takes hold.
Closer To Hell is exactly what it sounds like: a near-black metal, pulsing exploration of darkness, Mark's crunching bass climbing the steps between Julian and Luke's almost classical riffs. It takes hold again in the end with Sharni's enraged help to end in disastrous bliss.
AI Generated Love Letter matches Ben's scattershot drum patterns to Julian and Luke's hateful and impressive approach. The slower second half in this give us a glimpse of something--like reaching out towards a light that will forever be out of reach, painful and engrossing, yet never there.
Lilac, in its energetic introduction, sounds like a machine at work, every limb working for some obscure and sadistic cause. There's something so beautiful about this song to me. It's not all despair, there are glimmers of kindness in the sweeping chords that sourly birth its ending. Two opposed internal forces--one fighting for goodness in a world of pain.
Death of an Unsung Thought is such a beautiful title on its own, and its composition that of a Nine Inch Nails interlude. Guitar feedback, whispers, and scraping cymbals line the walls of a thumping drum machine and a lonesome electric guitar, like wind outside a creaking cabin.
It's Starting To Rain returns the band to full form, complete with broken blast beats, knife-like tremolos and Sharni's chanting vocals.
Home Will Find Its Way is a lobotomizing closer, every synchronized tom smash and guitar chug like another drill. Another stone thrown against the wall. Ben's masterful implementation of blast beats never seems out of place or overdone, always just right. The refrain in this song, an almost-shoegaze slow dance with fire, is a closing remark that can only end in a reluctant return to dust, and with it, the album itself. It's a hell of a closer.
Blind Girls are an endless, metallic throb of pain, a march of devastation, and the dying light that fades as it yearns for victory against it. They've taken the world by storm on their recent tour, and I can see their devastating exploits only taking them further and further.
9/10
Stream An Exist Exists.
-Foster
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