The
Blood Brothers
Burn,
Piano Island, Burn
www.thebloodbrothers.com
The crowd, relentlessly and rhythmically, chanted for "Ambulance Vs. Ambulance"
and so, after apologizing for the fact that some kids had to pay the Ticketmaster
fee in addition to the club's admission price, the band erupted into their new
single, and chaos reigned supreme... The kids, who had waited with deliberate
but intense patience through the technical-hardcore of
Arkham
and gothic-hardcore of
Milemarker,
were ready to explode, oozing with a violent enthusiasm whose expression the
suburbs of Orange County discourage. And
the
Blood Brothers were more than willing to be the catalyst tonight... With
each song, vocalists Jordan Billie and Johnny Whitney became more and more intense,
more and more insane, screaming their call-and-response stories of humanity's
darker sides with a blatant sexuality and sense of urgency usually reserved
for more subtle moments, but subtlety is not what
the
Blood Brothers are all about…
Granted, if
you found yourself at
Chain
Reaction on February 28th, 2003, without ever having heard any of their
music, you probably left wondering what just happened. In concert, they are
abrasive, chaotic, spastic, and barely musical, lacking even the most basic
of recognizable melodies, kind of like a school of feeding
piranha
attempting to play guitars, but you also probably noticed hundreds of kids not
just "getting it," but internalizing the noise, embracing the chaos,
and actually enjoying themselves…
So, what's up? Are you really getting that old? Have you really sold your soul
to corporate America? Maybe, but odds are that you just didn't know what you
were listening for, or to, for that matter. So, before you catch them on their
upcoming tour with gothic-indie-punksters
AFI
(yes, I know that the vast majority of you reading this already have tickets,
so don't even try to convince me that you've already decided that you're "too
cool" for Davey and friends just because KROQ is playing them), try living
with their new CD, Burn, Piano Island, Burn, for a couple of days…
Admittedly, it makes for far from an amiable roommate, especially on the
first listen - "Guitarmy" packs more into thirty-seven seconds that
most bands do into entire records, and the remaining forty-or-so minutes do
the same, mixing the spastic screaming of dual vocalists with primal, treble-heavy
guitars, distorted drums, and several keyboard-interludes that, if anything,
allow you to catch your breath before the sonic chaos resumes. Soon, though,
maybe after going through the CD two or three times, you find yourself deciphering
the post-modern poetry that is their lyrics, latching onto buried melodies,
and realizing that, even with all of the noise, these guys are brilliant!
Not just making noise for the sake of noise, but actually creating music that
sounds both new and vital, and that may be why they make such a difficult
first listen, because NOTHING out there sounds like they do. Musically, their
closest relatives are probably At
The Drive In, …And
You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, and avant-garde experimentalists
such as Einsturzende
Neubauten or Cabaret
Voltaire, but even the music of these bands only anticipates what the
Blood Brothers are/have created…Suddenly, you don't feel quite so
old…
Of course, many of the lyrics are as bizarre and disturbing as the music
that frames them, but taken in context, nothing less would be appropriate.
The Blood Brothers,
though, are not about shock, just confrontational extremes--whether it's in
one of their character's actions, the music that they create, or the shows
that they put on, and that's probably why I'm such a fan…Sure, they may
be too much for the kids who think that garbage like Good Charlotte rocks,
but so much music is about nothing more than popular acceptance and sounding
like everything else out there, begging to become a "hit," and that
is honestly the last thing that you could say about this band …
