apanthropy

Blindfolded and Led to the Woods
The Hardest Thing About Being God is That No One Believes Me
Prosthetic Records
To Be Released: 10/10/25

Rating: 88/100

“The breadth of ‘The Hardest Thing About Being God is That No One Believes Me‘ is a constant tension-inducing blast of dissonant, progressive, technical death metal. It moves like gears in a complex machine, each modicum of movement is precise, accurate, brutally efficient, stick your fingers inside and you’ll pull back stumps. It’s controlling and merciless, like choking somebody out and bringing them back only to choke them out again, over and over.”

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1 – Arrows of Golden Light
2 – Cafune
3 – Red
4 – Compulsion
5 – The Hardest Thing About Being God is That No One Believes Me
6 – Snow Angel
7 – Black Orchids
8 – Totem
9 – 600 Milligrams
10 – Coalescence
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Evolution can be a strange feat to witness. Through mutualism, neoteny, hybridization, and aposematism, an animal’s existence is the culmination of millions of years locked into a delicate chain and cycle of birth and death, in which some try to escape, deliberately fool stronger predators, or become predators themselves. Blindfolded and Led into the Woods is the storied act of sonic evolution in real-time. From its somewhat disjointed upbringing beginning in 2010, with Armed to the Teeth with Jellybeans arriving in 2011 as their debut EP, the band’s formula and delivery were constantly engaged in stress-laden states of metamorphosis. Four full-lengths later, the band has evolved from technical deathcore to a pure progressive and technical death metal monstrosity that is violently climbing the food chain with a relentless appetite and morose execution.

October 10th will see the band’s fifth and newest full-length, The Hardest Thing About Being God is That No One Believes Me, released through Prosthetic Records. Weighing in at ten tracks, settling in at nearly 50 minutes of new music, the band cut and hack their way through an exhibition of wild musical phrases, crushing movements, and purified death metal execution. While possessing some flourishes such as bass drops and breakdowns, this is purely an exhibition of macabre and intense metal of death.

The album begins with its longest track, the eight minute ‘Arrows of Golden Light,’ which builds up with tension during its extended introductory phrase, building and building to a boil, before unleashing on the listener. Discordant riffing fills the first verse with animosity, as the music breaks and transitions in rapid sequences, moving from phrase to phrase with rapid-fire ultra-technical drumming, manic riffing, and various stages of vocal execution. Sequences of blast-beats add such a pulverizing element to the delivery, often matched with furious dissonant riff work. There are more riff structures at play here than most bands bother to put on an entire record. There is a short breakdown-like section towards the end of the song that adds a monstrous sense of black hole-like pull to the track. Truly an exemplary example of psychotic, progressive death metal.

Shorter bursts of caustic sound come courtesy from tracks such as ‘Cafune,’ ‘Compulsion,’ and ‘Snow Angel,’ all which clock in under three minutes in length. Rapid-fire bursts of tremolo and ugly palm-muted sequences decorate the innards of ‘Cafune,’ which features a segment of insane hyper-blasting on the drums deep in the track. ‘Compulsion’ is pure manic energy from the start, with indescribable riff passages breaking and twisting over and over, it perverts its own sense of melody by surrounding it with dissonance. ‘Snow Angel’ is pure blasting death metal, while less than two minutes in length, it is, oddly enough, the most straightforward and focused track on the entire record.

The title track employs a stark vocal narrative, with hellish, psychotic music building up around it as it progresses further and further. Hearing the title repeated over and over towards the end of the track just adds a genuine sense of violent enterprise. Music like this is what you listen to while hunting another human.

The album closes on the beautiful clean introductory guitars of ‘Coalescence,’ a short moment of peace towards the album’s termination, like the moment of clarity before death. The song kicks into monstrous rancor, as it has throughout the entirety of the record, but ends on a dreary note with clean female vocals carrying the record into its ending. A major change in atmosphere and pacing, a perfect ending for such a vicious sequence of songs.

The breadth of The Hardest Thing About Being God is That No One Believes Me is a constant tension-inducing blast of dissonant, progressive, technical death metal. It moves like gears in a complex machine, each modicum of movement is precise, accurate, brutally efficient, stick your fingers inside and you’ll pull back stumps. It’s controlling and merciless, like choking somebody out and bringing them back only to choke them out again, over and over.

Production is dense and favorable towards the lower end of the sound but delivery is crisp and sharp, guitar execution exposes every grim note and every perverse sequence, drums are mixed well and fit well volume-wise. Vocals are mixed in perfectly, ranging from relatively clean hardcore-style singing to roaring gutturals, always in front but never overpowering.

For fans of technical death metal, progressive death metal, or acts such as Imperial Triumphant, Cephalic Carnage, or Ulcerate. A natural disaster of a death metal record, Blindfolded and Led to the Woods are reaching a peak that few have climbed in musicality, and continued evolution will surely see this beast of a band striking like lightning going forward.

Label: Prosthetic Records
Band: Blindfolded and Led to the Woods

AJK