The Blood Brothers - March on Electric Children

In the world of hardcore where excommunication will ensue if Hatebreed doesn’t reap your headphones and thudding monotony is the most consequential auditory asset; I love the Blood Brothers. While retaining the utmost integrity for their mothering sanction of hardcore, this Seattle rooted quintet trembles through polychromatic punk waves to incorporate more style oscillations and genre transpositions than Hatebreed does guitar chords. In the few short years since this five-some has begun demolishing PA systems and treading hardcore’s fixated moniker through genre eclecticism; the Blood Brothers have captivated everyone from basement stage frequenters to uber-producer Ross Robinson. Their most current aural cannonball into the pool of hardcore stagnancy, March on Electric Children, resembles what that h-word would sound like if fun were an epigram for the genre instead of hatred and if melody was filtered through the screams with invariant intensity. While the versatility of the noisecore assassins in Racebannon can exhaust even the most experienced scenester, the Blood Brothers practice the equivalent prowess without fatiguing to a formulaic equation. The energy comprised within March on Electric Children bursts at the disc’s seams, much like Amen’s punk compacted discography. Moreover, as the dual vocal protocol has been trodden into insincerity by the likes of pop regurgitators Linkin Park and Crazy Town, the Blood Brothers instill esteemed hardcore abrasions while extracting energy from every genre willing to be branded with such a proverb. In verifying that fun and intelligent hardcore are indeed not oxymorons, the Blood Brothers inject antibiotics of shredded guitar angularity, but the syringe in which it is delivered through is anything but the typical hardcore requisite. In fact, as the guitars position themselves as six stringed wrecking balls, their havoc as an instrument is felt on a minor scale with the much broader spectrum being the ground zero of innovation where styles clash and interests contrast. And that makes all the difference in the world. March on Electric Children stands as an incendiary voice advocating that avant-garde sensibilities can and will be mingled with rigid hardcore ideals. The Blood Brothers even sink their tenacious teeth into fuzzed out sequencers [“Kiss of the Octopus”] and the lone dissonance of a piano that coupled with anarchic and fevered vocals revs enough RPMs to overturn the obstinate hardcore benchmark in an instant [“American Vultures”]. Sure, this album sprints by in a mere 24 minutes, but not before imploding your mind, pulsing adrenaline to every artery in your bloodstream and emerging from the shackles of hardcore’s “tough guy” motif. March on Electric Children is the modern montage of the new hardcore subversion. [www.thebloodbrothers.com]