Among today’s spate of inbox bummers comes official confirmation that Seattle’s Blood Brothers, an Idolator fave, think it “best that our futures move forward on separate paths,” i.e. they broke up. 2004′s Crimes stands as the great ’00s crossover hardcore record that never was, wittier than all of their neo-screamo Headbanger’s Ball contemporaries, with plenty of goth gloom to warm the heart of old Gravity Records fans and unpunk touches like Todd Terry-esque keyboard riffs that sounded like they were being banged on harpsichords. Plus they once told me in an interview that they were totally infatuated with Basement Jaxx. Even if they never managed to sound like Basement Jaxx, it just made me love them all the more. How these guys weren’t bigger than dreck like Hawthorne Heights is beyond me.
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i was always more partial to burn piano island burn, probably because i saw them play the whole thing live in the lobby of a movie theater when i was 17.
1800 U-S-A- N-A-I-L-S OH BABY!
rip.
1-900, rather.
There isn’t much from the past 10 years that I love more than “Piano Island.” I already got the eulogizin’ bone exercised on av club when this first broke a few weeks ago though. I’ll just say that, if not for that band and the stuff I got into through them (Kill Sadie, Drive Like Jehu, Botch) I’d probably think about things very differently than I do now.
In answer to you implied question, Jess, Hawthorne Heights make fundamentally straight pop music about leaving your heart in Ohio and screaming into your pillow cause the girl who almost blew you last weekend doesn’t really want to be your “sad feelings” buddy AND dad won’t let you borrow the car :( I also think they sometimes have album covers with pictures of tanks or something. Blood Brothers made deconstructionist music with a strong melodic underpinning (how close “Piano Island” was to “Kid A” And “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”, in ethos if not style is still a pretty underacknowledged point IMO) that approaches political and character studies with surrealism and neo-dadaist sensory overload among its signiature components. Plus, I think the glam affectations didn’t quite wink and nudge hard enough to break through with with the mainstream metal crowd. Anyhow, now that I’ve beaten the parentheses key into submission, you can see where one is easier to sell than the other.
Tragic news, I was hoping to see them for a third time this next year or so…bleh.
@SuperUnison: Wanna make babies?
@Dick Laurent is dead.: I would, but there’s a chance I’ve been cloned.
Dammit. I know the standard line is that they’d started to run out of gas, but I don’t think you can ever dismiss a band that inventive. SuperUnison nailed it beautifully, so I’ll just state a few things: 1. I never understood why emo kids fucked around with metal after they’d witnessed what these guys did with it, 2. Piano Island is the most intense, and possibly the best, album of the decade, and 3. the saddest goddamn part is the only people who know it are us and Alternative Press.
Everybody needs a little devastation For two years, I lived three blocks away from the Ottobar, at the time the one club in Baltimore that regularly booked decent touring bands. I went there a lot, often three or four shows a week. Shows in Baltimore are different from shows in New York.
1. I’ll just stick with old Gravity Records. To me, Blood Brothers started like a bad Honeywell, and then turned into a boring VSS / Antioch Arrow mish-mash over time.
2. Every time I was around them they were whiny dicks. Example: They broke a DIY venue’s gear and then refused to pay for replacing it because it’s not worth replacing something that “sucks.” Wow, how early Black Dice of you.
3. Lots of people who make loud music listen to crap like Basement Jaxx.
4. In other words, I didn’t really like the band that much, but God bless ‘em for sticking it out for a decade.