Painstream

Painstream is the sixth Blind Channel album, out on 30 October 2026 through Century Media, and the first record they have made as a five-piece. The band stepped away at the end of 2024 and stayed away for roughly a year and a half. Their own framing of that gap, in the copy attached to the album, is that the silence was not a pause but something they were learning from. Joel Hokka, one of the two vocalists since 2013, left in April 2025; the remaining five carried on, and this is the result. Twelve tracks. Aaron Pauley of Of Mice & Men guests on "Into the Void", the fourth. The record was announced on 5 August 2026 together with a double advance single, "Diana" and "No Encores in a Swan Song", which share one music video posted the same day on the band's own channel. Two further singles were scheduled for 3 September and 1 October, and a comeback concert at the Helsinki Ice Hall on 14 November precedes a European headline run through February and March 2027. The sleeve credits the current line-up as Niko Vilhelm Moilanen, Joonas Porko, Olli Matela, Tommi Lalli and Aleksi Kaunisvesi. Japan gets the band in November 2026, at Club Quattro in Shibuya and Umeda — their first tour of the country rather than the single night they played in 2024.