Blind Channel: Exploring Their Dark Side
It’s no secret how popular the Eurovision Song Contest is amongst popular music fans. It is rare for rock and metal to invade that world, but when it does, they can deliver some of the best songs or the best acts and stage-show of the event. From MÅNESKIN rocking the stage last year, to LORDI becoming the first metal act to win the competition back in 2016. Another metal band who represented Finland in Eurovision recently was nu-metallers BLIND CHANNEL, who came sixth overall and released their fourth album this year; Lifestyles Of The Sick & Dangerous. With the growth of the band, their fanbase, and places they’ve performed since the contest, bassist Olli Matela and percussionist Alexsi Mattson, spoke with Distorted Sound about the album’s creation and everything that has happened since performing in Rotterdam.
“We got a new audience from it,” Alexsi explains. “We were actually aiming for a new audience when we decided to compete in Eurovision. We ended up getting a new label deal out of that as well, we’re with Century Media now. But in terms of the album, I don’t think performing in the contest has, you know, affected it that much. But it’s definitely great having new fans, not just in metal. A couple of weeks back, we played a really big pop festival with EDM artists and rappers. I guess it’s kind of saying we’re with the fans and the audience no matter their interests. We were in the US and the average age of the audience was a bit higher than in Europe after the US tour and I feel like both audiences liked us and fitted in to their music tastes. It’s everywhere.”
On the note of that US tour, the band toured across the country for the first time in their career, supporting FROM ASHES TO NEW. Olli gushed about, saying, “it was great to see everyone when we were there. It was also great that, in every city, there were fans of us as well, which was kind of surprising because we were in smaller cities, and we thought no one knew what BLIND CHANNEL even was. But at the end of the day, there were so many people listening to us as well. That’s a good thing about our band that we don’t have any limits. You can hear it on the album as well. There’s so many genres in this one album, but it still sounds like us, and I think it’s the same with fans. We gained a lot of fans from Eurovision but we still get a lot of fans from the metal scene. So that’s a really good thing for us and great to see.”
The new album, Lifestyles Of The Sick & Dangerous was released in July, which included their Eurovision hit Dark Side. “When we released our previous album, Violent Pop, the pandemic hit, so it’s very, very different now and we are super proud of their new album,” Olli excitedly says. “The reaction that the band and the sound continues from the previous album makes me think we’re on a good track with the album. It’s also the first one we produced ourselves. So it’s, of course a different different type of scenario, that in that kind of terms as well.”
Alexsi shares those sentiments. “We started to write in late 2020 which was when I joined the band, and to begin with, it was a bunch of demos and then we finished writing last summer. It was the end of June, I think when we completed all of our writing. Then we recorded it during the summer between the festival shows, so it was a fun process, it took a lot of time for sure. A bit stressful one, but I think we were really, really happy about the result. I mean, it couldn’t be better.”
“I think it’s awesome,” he continues to say, “I like that it sounds more BLIND CHANNEL, that people can tell, can hear that we have evolved our sound, we worked on it. It’s kind of the same, but I think it has a much more polished, more thought-through sound. It just feels very natural that people link those two albums because that’s great news for us, because then it’s like, ‘okay, we have our own thing’. So I can definitely see something similar between the albums but like I said, this is more polished and evolved, more produced even.”
So what can be expected from the band’s upcoming tour across the UK and Europe? Olli gave us some insider knowledge. “We’re currently building the production for it. The stage is going to be awesome. Where the shows are, they’re going to be awesome. We’ll be playing the new songs, we’ve actually started to play some of them live already and it’s just gonna be amazing on this upcoming tour. We enjoyed playing in London a couple months ago with ELECTRIC CALLBOY and it was one of the best shows we’ve had so we can’t wait to be back in the UK. I think the audience and the whole scene is amazing there.”
He rounded off the interview talking about the festivals he hopes BLIND CHANNEL will play, concluding, “I think we’re aiming to play all of the European festivals. We’re hoping to play next season, which will be maybe 2023, that summer. That’s the goal. Definitely want to play there. I think Reading & Leeds are great festivals out there in the UK. We’ve never been there but from what I’ve heard I’ve always wanted to play at Reading. So really looking forward to that and fingers crossed we get there next, it would definitely be a cool festival to play, but hopefully we’ll play any of the European festivals.”
Lifestyles Of The Sick & Dangerous is out now via Century Media Records.
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