Piercing. Howling. Unrelenting. These words describe the bombastic sound of BLINDING GLOW, a four-piece band from San Diego. "Unconditional Surrender," their second release, encapsulates the explosive energy of man's most horrendous creation, presenting it as an unforgiving barrage of d-beats, cutting riffs, and shrieking vocals. This is not just a musical attack on the true villains of the world, but an all-out, auditory assault. Don't sleep on this one.


Our take: You might be tempted to pass over this demo cassette from San Diego’s Blinding Glow because their brand of d-beat doesn’t reinvent the wheel stylistically, but it’s gotten its hooks into me over the past few weeks and stood up to repeat listens. One thing I like about Blinding Glow is that the players—the drummer and the guitarist in particular—are obviously strong, but not flashy. The drummer spends most of their time pounding out a perfect d-beat, though the crazy fill that ends “The Cold of Night” proves they could do a lot more than that if they wanted to. Likewise, the guitarist’s riffs are straightforward but meaty in all the right ways, and the leads that pop up in nearly every song are like 25% rock and roll, 75% Kawakami-style “nuclear rain,” a perfect proportion in my book. The vocals have a howling style, drenched in reverb and sitting toward the back of the mix, not drawing a ton of attention until the super catchy last track, “Doomed Life (The Cycle).” Maybe the straightforwardness of the execution here puts this in a “d-beat fanatics only” category, but even if that’s the case, the execution is so strong that those d-beat fanatics are sure to love it.