While I'm talking shit on people with patchy beards, let's get the rest of the weird ass beard community involved. I kinda hate prog too, unless it's the kind of prog album I need a character sheet and a set of dice to digest, like fuck off with your prog flourishes, I want to solve a murder mystery by the end of a prog album. But surprise, surprise these overachieving dickheads in Blindfolded manage to mesh just fucking beautifully woven progressive elements all over this album that never feel tacked on, the best example of this is in the song Cicada. I could write two full paragraphs about Cicada but after that Stu story I should really work on writing less, so I'll just say that I genuinely believe this is the single best death metal song to have ever come out of our fine country. It's fucking perfect, from its broad and sweeping cinematic intro riff that wouldn't be out of place on a Nile album to the middle section which ALMOST got me craving listening to a Red Sparrows album again, almost but post-rock kind of sucks too. If there's one song that you hunt down to decide if you're going to buy this thing, I urge you to find Cicada. Adding to how much I love this track, it descends into an almost industrial outro soaking in synth that fades out into the masterful Funeral Smile. This transition is everything, fucking god tier production and album placement. I mentioned earlier that in my opinion, this band has never worked better together. If I can suggest at least one listen of this to be by yourself on headphones, but I mean come on, if you're reading a written review of Blindfolded and Led to the Woods that is THIS LONG, you're probably by yourself quite often. Getting to that granular level on this album will only help you appreciate it more, Ben and Stu play together in a way that I wish more guitarists would spend the time to do, they seldom play the same voicing at the same time in a way that never feels like they're trying to out-do each other, until Stu swings his big ol' dick around with a solo that would push John Petrucci into a locker and beat up Rusty Cooley in the bike sheds after school. These guys are perfect for each other and they basically look like the same guy, so it's kinda funny too. But as every true pure strength build warrior knows, a couple of sexy twin guitarists ain't shit without a solid bass player and there is not a riff on this album that isn't amplified by Nick's big dangly bass tone and balls. His tone is so fucking snarly that at times I felt like I owed it money, the intro to Caustic Burns or the breaks in Methlehem had more than one rewind to fully digest the tone. Each song is just oozing synth which I appreciate so fucking much, the tones are nightmare inducing and as a man building a modular synth as I type this, you fucking know I'm going to be a gear punisher next time I see you, Stu.

Man, you couldn't have planned a better swansong for Tim than Rejecting Obliteration. His playing is fierce, driving, avoids any tech-death clichés, actually it always feels like he has somewhere else to be so is playing as hostile as he can to get the fuck out of there. I wonder where he's going in such a hurry. Dude I'm super excited to see what the boys get up to with Anthony and I hope Tim knows how much his drumming meant to this band, because it's fucking glorious. This brings me to Stace, and apparently I've wronged him or why else would he sound this pissed off and menacing. This is Stace's best performance, by a lot. And I swear to god I said that when Nightmare Withdrawals came out too. Stace is becoming too powerful if I'm being honest, someone needs to address that before he becomes mayor of Christchurch or something. He goes between full death metal gutturals and Hatebreed flag buying hardcore kid with ease and you know what? He's just won a lifetime membership to Himbo Home Gym for this performance.