“My Heart Escapes” by Blindside, Friday, November 24, 2023
THE BREATH OF RAIN IN MY LUNGS. With the return of Howard Benson, With Shivering Hearts We Wait is a natural follow up to About a Burning Fire. While Fire is a heavier album than Hearts, the guitars sound fuller with Benson behind the boards compared to their fifth album The Great Depression, produced in Sweden by Lasse Mårtén. With Shivering Hearts We Wait wades more into an alternative rock sound, flirting more with pop and less with post-hardcore than its preceding albums. The same producer who had masterfully refined the band on songs like “Pitiful” and “Sleepwalking,” blending lead singer Christian Lindskog’s scream and clean vocals with guitarist Simon Grenehed’s guitars, creates a moodier vibe on Shivering than any of the band’s previous work. As a hardcore band on the band’s prior record, Lindskog falls flat not because of his scream but because of the guitar. Blindside is in no way a tame band on their 2011 record, but Christian’s vocals tend to erupt into a scream in a fit of passion towards the end of the song, as a kind of icing, rather than a song that relies on the screaming.
I NEVER MEANT TO GIVE IT AWAY. I think that With Shivering Hearts We Wait was a satisfying follow up for fans. Of course, there’s the Blindside purists who actually like an album of songs that sound virtually the same with Christian Lindskog’s blood-curdling scream punctuating tinny drums and guitar/bass duplication. My opinion is that Blindside works much better as a post-hardcore band. Post meaning that the band has hardcore roots, but uses those elements to make hard rock that sounds more refined with rough edges. I think that the second track, “My Heart Escapes” on Shivering demonstrates the core of as a post-hardcore band trying to make it in the early 2010s. Sure, the lead single “Our Love Saves Us” and the Swedish radio single “Monster on the Radio” demonstrate where the band went to try to stay relevant in a changing music scene. On the other hand, “Bring Out Your Dead” is a refined version of the band embracing the hardcore part of post-hardcore. But today’s song isn’t a pop song in disguise—not that there’s anything wrong with Blindside doing whatever they want to. Ultimately the songs, no matter how pop, electronic, or heavy, come back to a feeling—shivering. It’s a cold summer in Sweden or the chill of the late fall somewhere further south. The album has a familiar feeling but also an eerie one, similar to the CD booklet of the young man alone in the woods. In 2011, we knew this band but as they performed on the main stage at the penultimate Cornerstone—flying over from Sweden just for that show—it felt like a premature wrap up. By 2016 at the latest we should have had a follow up. The band hasn’t announced a break up and even released a single, “Gravedigger” in 2019. They played Furnace Fest last year. But we’re left shivering in the cold, waiting for the follow up from Blindside.
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