Chicago's Axis: Sova hit the beaches of southern California with Ty Segall to make a total hi-fi classic. Often feral and consistently catchy, Blinded By Oblivion is lit up with interlocking drum kit + drum machine, adventuresome guitar, bass, and harmonic vocals on every song. Icy lyrical perspectives, rendered in a sunshiny natural paradise, transmit the fun and fraud of human polarities with urgency and an occasional eye roll. PLAY LOUD.
What happens when you take a band operating within the imposing, steel-grey confines of Chicago and ship ’em out to the sunny beaches of southern California to make a record? You get Blinded By Oblivion! Axis: Sova have crystallized on every level with their latest, dropping a total classic in the process — a perfectly conceived album of head-catching tunes in proliferation, produced to transmit polarities to our synapses with every song. Scintillating polarities! It ain’t Axis: Sova without a creeping sense of inalienable oppositions at work — this time, the brutal truths lie beneath flags of conquest flying in the electric wind, the introspection extroverted to explore human condition, intention, and manipulation in the modern world.
Blinded By Oblivion zeroes in with zero fucks on these Axis concerns, excited by sounds sourced from high water moments in the rock and roll eras: present, past and future. At times ferocious and slavering, at others, gleamingly diamond-cut, the clash of industrial steel vs. indelible nature is sonically palpable. You get it all, right out the gate: in the bright opening moments of “People,” Blinded By Oblivion’s first cut, an induction of dreamy guitar textures from all corners set up the immortal opening couplet, “People will be the end of people / People will snuff the light.” Dark humor never sounded so bright! From there, the accelerated, percussive thrust that begins “Hardcore Maps” launches a sequence of quick-hitting singles, each demonstrating a melodic attunement previously only touched upon in the Axis-verse.
A constant point of Axis: is their commitment to mutation and evolution. On each new LP, a slew of heady musical inputs inform a harrowing and insistent lyric POV lit up by allegories of social estrangement and personality crisis. While earlier releases Motor Earth and Early Surf dwelt in subterranean corridors mottled with lo-fi and psyched-out sonics, 2018’s Shampoo You sharpened their song-craft and fidelity, pushing vocal arrangements forward. Blinded By Oblivion accelerates this conception to new heights, thanks in part to the bold, hi-fi production courtesy of Ty Segall, who helped bring the band’s latest vision to life at his Harmonizer Studios.
That vision became hyper-focused with the sweet addition of (human) drummer Josh Johannpeter to the Axis: fold. Combined with new drum machines, the rhythms found on Blinded By Oblivion are split in sensual arrangement between organic and synthetic beats on every song. This stereo divergence opens space for Jeremy Freeze’s buoyantly grounded bass and Brett Sova’s guitar adventures to tap the source with unprecedented contrast and brevity, while providing bedrock for their refreshingly assured vocals to gloriously harmonize.
Making for an undeniably good/bad time, streamlined and more reflexibly physical than previously known, Blinded By Oblivion begs the universe to bring back rock and roll radio. All the elements are there: compassion for our collective fallibility, rebuke on the tip of the tongue, all rolled tight with hook-laden, high-energy construction. ’Bout halfway through Blinded By Oblivion, we hear Sova say, “I think my heart is made of metal.” Yuuuup. But we’d argue there’s at least a ventricle or two made of post punk! And with vena cavae split between psych and southern boogie. And cardiac veins of glam, power pop, and punk. Sometimes the heart is simply filled with sweet melody — so man, the beats of this metallic muscle are insane! Don’t try this at home — just play it at home. And in public. Wherever! And LOUD.
