The Blood Brothers - Burn Piano Island, Burn

Usually I try to open a review with an interesting quip or a lure to draw the reader into my tangled literary web of musical criticism. But not this time. Maybe it’s because I have no critique to give -- only overly emphatic praise -- or maybe it’s because my love for this band, this album and this music transcends mere words, text and sentences. Whatever is, cope with me while my ears drool over this audio masterpiece and I spit up words to try and make sense of the most prolific, beautiful and vital statement of rock since the Stooges’ Raw Power. Like some missing link between At the Drive-In, societal dystopia, William Burroughs, Converge, and absolute fucking perfection, Burn Piano Island, Burn is an album that is so brutal, so raw, and so vicious that it is nothing short of sheer beauty. The Blood Brothers literally defy all musical stereotypes and lazy pigeonholing: they play hardcore completely vacant of the previously vital supplement of testosterone [in fact, I’d go so far as to say their sound is practically feminine -- and I love them for it], they play heavy music with no pretentious meanderings of jazz fusion or elitist tendencies [just pure fucking punk rock], and they spit the sassiest, catchiest pop hooks among ear-shattering screams [and every syllable is so alive it has a heart of its own], and they play music they love regardless of categorization, trends or popularity [and its more addictive than heroin]. Whew. Yet, they’re so much more than all of that. To put it bluntly, the Blood Brothers are the voice of a revolution, a statement to music and the visionaries of a new generation -- my generation. A generation sick and fucking tired of choking on testosterone-riddled rock, having their eyes polluted by a silver screen, and having sex, media and art being bought out by the largest dollar sign. Their brilliant, surrealist lyrics conjure to ghost of William Burrough’s classic novels while painting an avant-garde canvas riddled with words of societal dystopia, sexual exploitation, skin-deep cover girls and decayed values. But what’s so vital to the Blood Brothers illusory vision is how they resurrect it and make it come alive to sound literally like nothing else music has ever heard. The vocals here -- be it the blood splattering screams, the cavity-inducing hooks or anything in between -- are absolutely on fire. Nothing compares. Nobody in the history of music sounds better than Jordan Blilie and Johnny Whitney -- the two headed monster that makes up the Blood Brothers’ fire-breathing voice -- when they hit the mark of perfection on such tracks as “Burn Piano Island, Burn” and “Cecilia and the Silhouette Saloon.” And Burn Piano Island, Burn doesn’t stop there. The Blood Brothers’ music is nothing short of incendiary: it burns hardcore stereotypes, torches punk’s commercial façade and reveals a corpse of extremes where guitars stab, drums stomp and pianos, synthesizers, glockenspiels and acoustics create an aural world to get lost in forever. It’s fucking perfect. The Blood Brothers are my saviors. Burn Piano Island, Burn should be the contemporary holy book of rock. And I’m telling you right now: you need this release. Everyone needs to know music like this exists; music that leaps so far past boundaries that it’s in another fucking universe; music that is so vacant of trends, stereotypes and sickeningly typical rock norms that there is no precedent; music that is so far above the learning curve that it makes everything else sound stale, decayed, aged, boring and monotonous. And I fucking love it. [www.thebloodbrothers.com]