Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
Photo by Justin Pietropaoli
Hudson Valley’s Soul Blind have been drawing inspiration from the broad spectrum of ‘90s / 2010s alternative rock since they started as a band. Showcasing their instincts for emotionally driven guitar work, a heady rhythm section, and introspective lyricism, they’ve built a steady following that landed them amongst their contemporaries in Narrow Head, Bleed, and Fleshwater for good reason. However, they aren’t exactly the same band they were on their first EP Willpower from 2018. With each release that followed, a more pronounced grunge influence via Alice in Chains and Soundgarden emerged before the culmination of their varied debut album Feel It All Around in 2022. In the years since, they’ve toured with alternative metal stalwarts Helmet, melodic hardcore outfit Stand Still, and post-hardcore veterans Drug Church, all while honing in on the intensity of their own live sound and unearthing what truly resonates with them stylistically. On their sophomore album Red Sky Mourning, they confront individual challenges surrounding newfound sobriety, the effects of grief on loved ones, or expressing emotional vulnerability by embracing a more brazen hard rock presence without completely abandoning their roots. I spoke with vocalist/bassist Cen about returning to work with Adam Cichocki and Jon Markson, creating from a place of authenticity, hometown representation, and putting the shoegaze tag to bed.
When I caught Soul Blind last year on The Prude Tour with Pony, Modern Color, and Drug Church, there was a notable shift in the sound they were pursuing. As they performed their unreleased single “Hide Your Evil,” it didn’t sound too far off from heavier songs like “Seventh Hell” or “Tribe,” but it possessed a renewed sense of urgency and an unshakeable candor that pervaded the entire room as it elicited a couple of hell yeahs from the crowd. Glimpses of the band rocking out as red lights frantically flickered overhead only drove the point home – when Soul Blind lean into their hard rock/alternative metal nature, they are simply in their element, and they know it too. It’s something they explore further on Red Sky Mourning as they worked to incorporate what makes them such a formidable band on stage.
The recording process took place in August 2024 as the band — comprising Cen, Steve Hurley (drums), Finn Lovell (guitar), and Justin Sarica (guitar), took a month long residence at The Animal Farm in Flemington, NJ; a restored barn from the 1800s that bears promotional tags like “genres: heavy metal, heavy rock, rock” and “sounds like: Sleep, Black Sabbath.” The band also reunited with Cichocki and Markson who recorded, mixed, and produced their 2021 EP Third Chain. “We just wanted to return to them and see if there could be a little more emphasis on capturing our live sound, like capturing our guitar tones right, and making sure the vocals are a little more raw and less produced,” Cen shares. After working with Will Yip on Feel It All Around, the band had gained experience in working with a producer who essentially fulfilled the creative role of an additional band member. When it came to Cichocki and Markson, the duo inhabited a similar role in producing the album by providing creative ideas and helping them figure out melodies and harmonies. “The [Third Chain] EP we did with Jon and Adam was kind of quick and we were in and out in a weekend, so we didn’t have a lot of time to brainstorm then,” Cen explains. “This time we had a week of pre-production of us just fleshing the songs out and playing them live and trying to refine them before we even recorded.”
Like most bands who approach their second album, the time it took to develop new songs went by rather quickly in comparison to the years that it took to write for their first full length album. Cen shares, “The album before this, we had songs that had been completed for four years. But this album was a lot more current and we either wrote songs within a six month period, or we wrote a couple in the studio, which we hadn’t done before. Instrumentally and even some melodies vocally, it was a collaborative process with us. We all share roles. It’s rare that someone comes with a fully complete song and presents it to the group. But this time I did write a lot of melodies and focused on the vocals more in the studio as opposed to having these fully fleshed out things, which kind of forces a necessity on you. You don’t have time to muddle over things. It was do or die, but the challenge was fun.”
The result is an album that sounds more in line with their identity as a rock band, evoking some sort of crossover between Smile Empty Soul circa 2003 and Alice in Chains’ contemptuous allure on The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here. Cen exhibits more control over his vocals than ever while Lovell and Sarica circle each other with mountainous guitar riffs and Hurley steers the momentum with an unrelenting force behind the kit. Hurley’s additional vocals on the record for the first time also offers a closer representation of the band’s live performance that they wanted to replicate in the studio.
After signing with Closed Casket Activities (Fleshwater, Cloakroom, Age of Apocalypse) over the summer, the band officially premiered their first single “Hide Your Evil.” The accompanying video captures segments of a free show they put on in Brooklyn in collaboration with director Parker Foster, who also shot their “Seventh Hell” video, and has a “Smells Like Teen Spirit” likeness to it with its warm hues and energetic live crowd.
The follow-up single “Dyno” pulls on more heavy metal influences complete with crunching riffs and soaring solos, while the gritty DIY video feels like a callback to one of their earliest videos, “Swirl,” which plays into their ‘90s aesthetic with found footage clips from a camcorder, only this rendition almost feels campy with manic night shots of the woods and vaguely ritualistic props.
Even as Deftones and Alice in Chains comparisons abound, Soul Blind have never shied away from their sonic influences. Having played together for the better part of the last seven years, their consistent style is more reflective of the symbiotic relationship between the four members and the way that touring has informed their approach. “We have always been into a wide variety of ‘90s hard rock, but finding ways to emulate that through our lens has taken some time to get down. We’ve had Alice in Chains type songs since the Promo 2019, but we wanted to refine that and explore different things that we want to do without trying to fit a mold,” Cen shares. “When we toured with Helmet in 2023, just seeing them every day had an influence on us. We also got a heavier style from playing live shows where we could see which songs resonate with people more and what gets people moving. Our taste and what we have fun playing is generally better when we get to be a little more active on stage.”
Throughout Red Sky Mourning, there’s a clear effort made in maintaining more straightforward rock songs, but there’s still a diversity that’s present through more melodic songs like “Mistake to Wonder,” “Red Sky Mourning,” “Thru the Haze,” and “Closer to You.” Each song seems to have its own moment as they stand out in contrast to the heavier songs and feel the most familiar as they’re closer to the band’s earlier stylings that garnered them the sometimes polarizing shoegaze label. The title track itself is also a remnant from the last album and is the closest we get to a ballad with its dirge-like gestures and airy choruses along with the emotionally gratifying “Thru the Haze.” Thankfully both of those tracks see the light of day here, and the way the album is structured encourages listeners to follow along rather than drift in and out passively from a lack of variation or sheer boredom.
Of all the songs on the album, one of the shortest but heaviest songs that makes a lasting impact from the jump is “Billy.” Named after their friend William Wassweiler who wrote the song with them, it displays Soul Blind’s range in under 3 minutes as it oscillates between seething rage and resolute calm before breaking out into a maelstrom of cavernous groove metal thrashes. Cen shares, “It’s a half step down, and it’s the only song in a different time signature than we normally do. We tried some different things on it and I think it works pretty well. It wasn’t a single, but we had been playing that one on our last tour just because we knew we would get a cool live reaction from the energy.”
Coming from New York, there’s a distinct grittiness to certain NYC bands like Helmet or noise rockers like Unsane that gives listeners a feeling for the environment they’re surrounded by. The music is rife with a palpable intensity, and this same energy seeps into some of Soul Blind’s new material that probably would have landed them on Amphetamine Reptile Records in the ‘90s. It’s particularly apparent on the blistering track “New York Smoke” where they proudly make their mark while loosely implying that they aren’t so easy to box in when it comes to the music they make. “‘New York Smoke’ was a title I had that I just saw in the wild somewhere. We always rep where we’re from, but to stamp it on a title for something is a cool territorial mark, and I think ‘smoke’ also comes from not really having a genre to call us, because we’re kind of all over the place. We usually go off the broad scope of rock, but I kind of like just creating something for better or worse and saying, ‘it’s just New York smoke,’” Cen expresses frankly.
album artwork by Dom Pabon
The album title is taken from an old sailor’s saying that Cen’s mother used to share with him: “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.” Though it’s not necessarily directly related to the themes of the album, Red Sky Mourning does play off of the wariness that comes from possible troubles looming ahead. It also ties in with the visual artwork for the album from Dom Pabon who presents a stormy blue sky in juxtaposition to the title. Despite the underlying turmoil that runs red through much of the album, the artwork signals a break in the clouds where some semblance of hope comes shining through.
When it comes to which song is his favorite, Cen shares, “I really like ‘Business or Pleasure,’ the opener. It has this cool energy to it and leads into more hard rock.” And while the band are fellow fans of shoegaze acts, he goes on to set the bar straight, “I wanted to get out of always being called a shoegaze band, because we’re just kind of trapped in that lane. I think that was a lot of the motivation in the back of our heads where we don’t want to be pigeonholed into that genre because it’s not what we’re doing. Like we need to shut down this rumor. If you put on this record and you go a couple songs in, there’s no shoegaze.”
After three long years, Soul Blind return to handle unfinished business and take another step closer towards becoming their most authentic selves. Having evolved to hold their own in the ever changing landscape of alternative rock, they continue to raise the bar with every release and have practically paved the way for newer bands like the Alice in Chains / Stone Temple Pilots-inspired rockers in Flatwounds to emerge.
As they gear up for tour next month with metalcore band Better Lovers, Cen closes our interview saying:
I’m personally very into the style that we are leaning into and just putting ourselves in a better position of differentiating ourselves from the pack. I think that’s pretty big for me, just trying to carve a lane for ourselves and be true to ourselves in the process. This is all just music that we’ve loved since we were very young and it’s satisfying to put our spin on that. I’m appreciative of anybody who likes anything of ours, but it’s nice to properly guide a newer listener or even older ones with this new record and try to encapsulate what we’re trying to go for a little bit better.
Red Sky Mourning is out now via Closed Casket Activities
Catch Soul Blind on tour:
Nov 13 Greensboro, NC – Hangar 1819 %
Nov 14 Athens, GA – 40 Watt Club %
Nov 15 Jacksonville, FL – Albatross %
Nov 16 Pensacola, FL – Vinyl Music Hall %
Nov 19 New Orleans, LA – Tiptina’s Uptown %
Nov 21 Austin, TX – Come and Take It Live %
Nov 22 Houston, TX – Bad Astronaut %
Nov 23 Oklahoma City, OK – Beer City Music Hall %
Nov 25 Colorado Springs, CO – Black Sheep %
Nov 26 Lincoln, NE – Bourbon Theatre %
Nov 28 Des Moines, IA – Wooly’s %
Nov 29 Madison, WI – Majestic Theater %
Nov 30 Joliet, IL – The Forge %
Dec 01 Grand Rapids, MI – Pyramid Scheme %
Dec 03 Columbus, OH – A&R Bar %
Dec 04 Harrisburg, PA – Capitol City Music Hall %
Dec 05 Amityville, NY – AMH %
Dec 06 Hampton Beach, NH – Wally’s %
Dec 09 Allentown, PA – Archer Music Hall &
Dec 10 Wilmington, DE – The Queen &
Dec 11 Jersey City, NJ – White Eagle Hall &
Dec 12 Worcester, MA – Palladium &
% with Better Lovers
& with Saves the Day, Glassjaw
—
Loan Pham | @x_loanp
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