“We’re Soul Blind, from the Hudson Valley,” is how the set starts. And the band makes good on that threat from the first note. Thick, pedal-drenched, and aggressive, Soul Blind take the heaviest elements of their hardcore roots and cut it with Modern Rock. The songs you heard in your dad’s truck are run through the unforgiving filter of the music that drew you to punk and metal. Crowbar and Stone Temple Pilots. All Out War into Tad. It’s all there, because Soul Blind doesn’t try to hide what shaped them. The result is music for the freaks. Non-denominational subculture weirdo tracks. It’s the sound of living in the shadow of NYC and never feeling jealous. The sound of proudly standing on the shoulders of local giants who never got their due. The sound of being four reprobates with nothing to offer the world but music. In other words, a real band.

There’s a phrase you’ll hear repeatedly when in the company of Split Chain: “The Chain does what it wants”. As mantras go, it’s used by the Bristol, UK quintet as a means of encapsulating the broad-minded, unconstrained creative freedom with which they approach their art, as well as a means through which to try to make sense of the sky-rocketing trajectory the band have found themselves on.

Call it instinct, fate, divine intervention, whatever – the whims of ‘The Chain’ have led to a moment where one thing is abundantly clear: Split Chain are one of the hottest, zeitgeist-capturing new bands in the world.

“Split Chain is something that none of us feel like we have any control of,” says frontman Bert Martinez-Cowles. “Split Chain simply does what it wants and what it needs.”

It is at this juncture in Split Chain’s journey that debut album motionblur arrives. Described by Bert as “a coming of age story”, the album channels the conflicting and contradictory angst, excitement, joy and pain of growing up and discovering your true sense of self. motionblur presents a story that speaks to both Split Chain’s members’ personal experiences and those shared together in the past few dizzying years; a visceral, kaleidoscopic wall of sound where unsettling, disorientating confusion meets a fevered adrenaline-rush. motionblur is an album to experience, to feel, to engulf; it’s the blissful sense of euphoria that comes with drowning in its waves.

Tulsa, Oklahoma

dreamin’ endlessly