The Blood Brothers
Crimes
V2
The Blood Brothers' Crimes boasts tracks that make your renal system inadvertently secrete adrenaline. While
you may be aware that you're just sitting around listening to the Blood Brothers' fourth full-length,
your brain is convinced it's hearing an orphanage burn down and it can't
decide whether it should command you to try and help or just stand around and watch the flames.
The Seattle quintet's previous album, ...Burn, Piano Island, Burn, showcased a hardcore band moving from
screamo to something more . . . out.
Its spazzy guitars and jawdropping vocal contortions, which defied all musical convention, made it one of the
strangest major-label releases of 2003. Songs like "Ambulance Vs. Ambulance," which painted a grisly portrait of
ambulance X and ambulance Y going about their duties, exhibited a smart, Grand
Guignol sense of humor. Crimes marks another bizarre step forward for the Blood Brothers, who
seamlessly incorporate so many different influences into their sonic splatter — noise, glam, grindcore
and god knows what else — that it's hard to pick them out.
The Blood Brothers haven't abandoned the music they started out playing, but it acts more like an armature around which Crimes'
songs are built. Almost-ballad "Love Rhymes with Hideous Car Wreck" features castrato vocals winding around a slinky
rhythm section. It's probably the most subdued song on the album, although "subdued" is a relative term with these guys.
"Peacock Skeleton with Crooked Feathers" builds off of a dollar-store keyboard riff, spiraling into a kind of stomping
thrash with lyrics befitting a Surrealist
collage ("Is it bruises or roses or cradles or coffins? [It's all those!]"). "My First Kiss at the Public Execution"
features some of the weirdest call-and-response singing ever put to tape, including such mordant one-liners as "His
lips spun like revolving fun-house doors as the hush kisses at our neck nape." "Devastator," the album's final track
about a post-apocalyptic warlord named (fittingly enough) Devastor, begins with a gospel-like chant and quickly shifts
into a blitzkrieg of noise, with vocalists Johnny Whitney and Jordan Blilie trading howls like the twins from The Shining trying to find
each other in the burning Overlook Hotel. Although their tongues seem to be planted firmly in cheek while singing
absurd lyrics as subtle as a grindhouse horror flick, there's something weirdly earnest about their delivery.
On the title track, the lines "If we rob the lonely widow/ we could steal her credit cards/ and buy a cottage by the
ocean" come across as a legitimately heartfelt invitation.
The best production values a major-label budget can buy make everything on Crimes as clear as a bell,
which helps. This clarity elevates what could have easily been a sonic muddle into an album that bears repeat listenings.
Producer John Goodmanson previously worked with the likes of
Blonde Redhead and Sleater-Kinney. Interestingly enough, ...Burn,
Piano Island, Burn was produced by Ross Robinson, who did time producing nu-metal mongoloids
Slipknot and Limp Bizkit. This change in producers de-emphasizes the surface noise and acknowledges the songwriting acumen that lies beneath.
An acknowledgment the Blood Brothers' sound has matured to the extent that it can be appreciated by indie-rock palates?
Hard to say: Five out of five people I played the album for stared at the stereo like a dog being shown a card trick. At the
very least, it's nice to know that just when it seemed that the whole hardcore genus had been sorted by species
and phylum and then straitjacketed by tradition, the kids are still finding ways
to do something entirely new with aggressive music.
— Rick Stinson (richardkstinson at yahoo dot com)
