Blind River

Former Godsized, Pig Irön and Earls Of Mars guys say forget the posing, just deliver the rock.

“There’s a time and a place for miserable bands, and it can be great to wallow in despair, but sometimes all you wanna do is have a few beers and a party. Not in a Steel Panther way,” Blind River frontman Harry Armstrong says, laughing, “more a Motörhead, AC/DC rock’n’roll way.”

Armstrong has summed up Blind River perfectly. The five-piece (whose members have played in bands including Godsized, Pig Irön and Earls Of Mars) formed in 2017. They create straight-up classic bluesy rock with a gritty groove that’s made for boogieing and cracking open cold ones. Imagine a slightly less heavy Orange Goblin, or if the Black Crowes had grown up in Guilford.

“We’d all become friends before this band started,” Armstrong explains. “We may not have been a fan of each other’s music, but we were fans of each other as people. I knew I could hang out with these guys and there would be no attitude.”

After Armstrong joined the band, they set about putting together some material, but it was important to all of them not to rush the recording process.

“We had written a bunch of songs, but we thought they needed to be brewed,” Armstrong explains. “They needed to be played live fifty to a hundred times. Then you really get to know the song better, and see how it goes down in a live environment. “We were phoning up every venue saying: ‘Can we play?’ and every time we went back, the crowds would get bigger. I find it just as fun to play to two men and a dog as to a few hundred people. It’s just a different environment – and if you can win those two people and that dog over, brilliant!”

Their persistence paid off. “We did Bloodstock [in 2017] before we’d released anything, because someone else saw us play and knew someone at the festival,” Armstrong explains. “We were on at 10.30am or something, but loads of people turned up. When we played the same year at Hard Rock Hell, they booed us because we said we’d ran out of material to play. I guess it’s cos they wanted us to stay on… but I’m not sure!”

The band were able to afford to book only four days in the studio – “We figured worst case scenario we come out with an EP,” says Armstrong – but with the chemistry they had and after honing the songs on the road, that was all they needed.

“I’ve always kind of shied away from playing [accessible rock music], because I didn’t want to be in that world where people think they’re Axl Rose, standing there posing,” says Armstrong, who has ties with the underground. “But that scene has kind of distilled down to its purest form again, and people just want some rock music: no pretence no bullshit.”

With Blind River that’s exactly what you get. Blind River is available now from www.blind-river.org. The band play Hard Rock Hell in November.

“People just want some rock music: no pretence no bullshit.”