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by Keavin Wiggins
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Just when you thought there was nowhere new for punk to go, The Blood Brothers come along and shake the very foundations of the genre, taking chances that no mortal band would attempt and showing why their MTV driven pop-punk illegitimate cousins are full of shit. If the Cadillac Tramps were the American answer to The Clash, then The Blood Brothers are the 21st century answer to Fugazi, or at the very least punk rock's version of early Faith No More.

Some were apprehensive when they heard that The Blood Brothers had inked a major deal with ARTISTdirect and that the new album would be produced by Ross Robinson. The iconic head of the imprint label that the Blood Brothers singed to and is best known for producing Korn, Slipknot, and  Limp Bizkit. There was some solace in the fact that Robinson also produced At The Drive In. But no one but the hardcore fans of The Blood Brothers could have expected what was to come with “Burn Piano Island, Burn”. This album is sure to send the Korn Bizkit kids into spasms and scare the hell out of programmers at MTV and mainstream radio. In other words, it rocks you to your core! Makes you question what in the hell has been happening with heavy music for the past 5 years and why we’re been listening to wannabe’s whine in emo simplicity when there was a band like The Blood Brothers tapping an insane source of thunderous music that is explosive in its intensity, genius in its honesty, that hits you with more force than the “superbombs” that are landing on Baghdad, and leaves you feeling like you’ve just sat through the soundtrack to Armageddon. 

All you need to get hooked is one listen to the 37 seconds of musical anarchy that is the opening track, “Guitararmy”.  That song is only the starts of the seemingly uncontrollable chaos that is “Burn Piano Island, Burn,” a stunning masterpiece of noise that breaks all the rules and doesn’t bother to come up with new ones. 

So if you are brave enough to give the Blood Brothers a try, you must forget everything you thought you knew about punk. Remember punk is a word that has become meaningless in the context of modern music where it’s used to describe a teenage Alanis wannabe in a Hot Tropic uniform, with childish lyrics of puppylove and a powerpop band that play before the cameras with their hats turned sideways in hip-hop fashion but don’t even Blink at their shallowness and contrived nature.  While very few can give a real definitive explanation of what now constitutes “punk,” after hearing a mere few seconds of The Blood Brothers there is no denying that this is genuine article. 

Don’t look to the past or the sound of the legends of punk to define The Blood Brothers’ punk rock credentials. They don’t follow in anyone’s footsteps or rehash the music of those who came before them. They are punk in the truest sense of the word because they know no bounds, break all the rules and set out to bash you over the head with their chaotic music that has all the subtly of a nuclear bomb. The definition of what is and what isn’t punk may have been muddled over the past couple of decades but when you hear The Blood Brothers you know that is just what you are listening to. 

"It's not the sound that matters," explains producer Ross Robinson. "It's the integrity that you keep within the music. A lot of bands today claim punk rock, but they really have nothing to do with it. The difference is that if you asked the guys in Blood Brothers to do something with their music or their lives that they don't want to do, they'll actually get physically ill. They're young, so they know they've got nothing to lose. To me, that's punk rock, right there. It's a way of life and a state of being, more than a style of music.

"It's what integrity sounds like."

Is this ferocious sonic assault the spark of a new musical revolution? Given that this band hails from Seattle, the city that gave us the grunge onslaught in the early 90’s some might expect that The Blood Brothers is a sign of things to come. That is however unlikely as The Blood Brothers are much too intense for primetime but they may ignite their revolution below the surface in that netherworld between the mainstream and the underground where they are already certified heroes and conquerors. They may just do for real punk what Queens of the Stone Age did for stoner rock; take it beyond the underground and expose it to a larger audience without becoming mainstream. So don’t hold your breath expecting Carson Daly to scare the hell out a room of insipid teenyboppers on TRL with The Blood Brothers. Although that would be fun to watch, The Blood Brothers will never be the band of the week or the hip new thing to the Hot Tropic crowd, it’s much too raw and honest for that but The Blood Brothers musical integrity should appeal to those who have a truer sence of music, that are drawn to music for much deeper reasons than the lemmings who jump on whatever bandwagon is popular at the moment and just as quickly move on to the next “big thing”. 

The Blood Brothers isn’t your dad’s punk band or your little sister's powerpop pinup boys. This is a band that is the modern embodiment of what those misfits in the 70’s were after before punk became just another fashion and marketing ploy. A band whose music raises a fist to conformity and says, “Fuck you! I don’t want to play by your rules”. The Blood Brothers are a band whose time has come. The real question that lingers now is... can you handle it?