REVIEW: Blindfolded And Led To The Woods - The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes Me

There’s a special kind of madness at work in The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes Me. The new album from New Zealand’s BLINDFOLDED AND LED TO THE WOODS isn’t just heavy, it’s completely possessed. For those who have been paying attention, this record feels like a natural and unsettling evolution of what the band have been building towards. Their 2023 record Rejecting Obliteration proved they could play tech-death with terrifying precision, but here they sound freer, stranger, and far more dangerous. Self-producing for the first time has clearly unshackled them. Every track teeters on the brink of collapse, and that’s exactly where BLINDFOLDED AND LED TO THE WOODS thrive.

Where earlier material went straight for the jugular though, The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes Me is a slower bleed, more deliberate and psychological. It’s the band’s first concept album, charting the mental unravelling of a stalker consumed by obsession, and it plays out with dreadful control. Thematically, it’s about fixation and power, but the band approach it with an eerie kind of elegance. Each song feels like a page torn from a diary written in panic, the boundaries between love, possession, and annihilation blurring until nothing makes sense.

Opening track Arrows of Golden Light sets the tone perfectly. It begins in eerie calm, with shimmering clean guitars and ghostly ambience, before mutating into a twisting, hyper-technical storm. There’s space here, moments of quiet unease that make the explosions hit even harder. It’s a stunning opener, all menace and creeping insanity. From there, things only get darker. Compulsion is the album’s wild-eyed centrepiece, bringing a violent rush of riffs and blast beats that captures the exact moment reason gives way to mania.

Red adds a different flavour, its intricate riffing darting between dissonance and melody like a trapped animal, trying to escape its own skin. Then 600 Milligrams slows everything to a suffocating crawl, eerie synths wrapping around STACE FIFIELD’s desperate screams until it feels like the walls themselves are closing in. 

The title track, The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes Me, distils the record’s central mania into its most frightening form. It’s claustrophobic and unrelenting, with a swirl of convulsive guitars, blast beats, and vocals that blur the line between fury and delusion. Lyrically, it marks the moment the record’s protagonist fully snaps, breaking into their victim’s home in a deranged act of devotion and control. Musically, it mirrors that descent with spiralling rhythms and suffocating tension, as if the whole track is gasping for air inside its own obsession. Everything culminates in Coalescence, the haunting closer, where Icelandic artist Hera Hjartardóttir drifts in like a ghost at the edge of the carnage. Her mournful refrain of “this cold world” feels like both a confession and release, a final breath after total collapse.

FIFIELD doesn’t just deliver the story of this record; he becomes it. His voice splinters and convulses, embodying the central character’s descent with unnerving conviction. The rest of the band match that intensity at every turn. Guitarists STUART HENLEY-MINCHINGTON and DAN HAYSTON weave together jagged riffs, off-kilter melodies, and waves of synth, giving the record its unpredictable shape. HAYSTON’s arrival has clearly expanded the band’s sonic range, with his atmospheric touches adding texture and unease throughout the record. Drummer ANTHONY “COOTA” ASIMAKOPOULOS and bassist NICK SMITH form the bedrock, locking into a groove that’s both mechanical and strangely alive.

If Rejecting Obliteration was the band’s act of rebellion, The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes Me is their reckoning. It’s a record about power, control, and the seductive pull of obsession - both the character’s and, in a way, the band’s own. BLINDFOLDED AND LED TO THE WOODS have never sounded more focused, more fearless, or more disturbingly alive.

Score: 8/10

The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes Me was released on October 10th via Prosthetic Records.

Words: Zuanna Pazola

Photos: Blindfolded and Led to the Woods