Album review: Blind Channel – Exit Emotions

‘Rohkea rokan syö,’ declares the blurb for Blind Channel’s bombastic fifth album. “Fortune favours the brave.” Few could ever accuse the Oulu collective of anything like cowardice, of course. Rising from the Finnish underground. Reviving a recently-deeply-unfashionable brand of nu-metal. Becoming their country’s most slamming Eurovision entrants since Lordi. Having the temerity to push past that campy milestone in pursuit of bigger and better things. Even by those bold standards, though, Exit Emotions feels like Blind Channel shooting their shot.

By many metrics, see, it is a pop album. By the midpoint of opener Where’s The Exit they're bumping past the brutish bombast and cutting catharsis into a playground of colossal hooks and outright R&B. The aggression of DEADZONE comes with a slick polish, cannily imitating peak Linkin Park. Wolves Of California feels like a more tasteful version of Hollywood Undead, all rap machismo, hardcore ‘urf-urfs’ and a huge chorus carefully engineered together.

Everything feels engineered for peak appeal. Only three of the 12 songs here go past three minutes, for instance. None exceed four. Any hint of a mid-album lull is counterbalanced by a cameo from rising English alt. pop star RØRY on Die Another Day. Songs like Not Your Bro may border on the absurd, but they’re so gleefully high octane that they’re hard to dislike. The whole experience goes by in a sugary, adrenalised blur.

Those with a distaste for maximalist metal contrivance will have switched off long before skycraping closer One Last Time… Again sweeps in to send proceedings totally over the top. But for anyone willing to buy in, Exit Emotions is the ticket for one hell of a pop-metal ride.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Linkin Park, Bring Me The Horizon, Papa Roach

Exit Emotions is out now via Century Media

Read this: Blind Channel: “In Finland you’re told not to follow your dream – we want to be the biggest band in the world”