No, we really don’t expect that most of you dear readers are fans of The Blood Brothers. Still, they are definitely a sign of life in their genre. They escape the sometimes ridiculous worlds of punk and hardcore, emerging with a fist in the air and a few shot vocal chords. So, we aren’t trying to pass this off as Paste’s new ideal for eclecticism, because they scream, they bang their heads, people crowd surf and you have a headache when you leave their show. I can attest that this ain’t Mark Heard and it ain’t Emmylou Harris.
Still, The Blood Brothers can write passion into songs and they can fire through them with as much urgency and conviction as any songwriter on the block. That’s exactly what they did in Atlanta at the underground club MJQ(it’s literally underground). Once the members were setup and standing on the stage, singer Johnny Whitney said “are you ready” and a few seconds later The Blood Brothers were pounding through, “F—ing’s Greatest Hits” the second track on their latest release, Burn Piano Island, Burn. When I say pounding, it needs to be understood that this isn’t Soundgarden pounding, or Led Zeppelin pounding, this is an entirely new type of pounding brought to us first by bands like Refused and Blindside.
By the time they got to the fourth song, “Ambulance vs. Ambulance,” The Blood Brothers were in a groove that only music as energetic as theirs could put someone in. All the members are skinny, bone skinny, because you have to be to have the kind of stage presence the band requires just to keep up.
Music this nimble and this heavy usually fails live because bands can’t stay tight enough to pull off what they do in the studio. Not true at all for The Blood Brothers. The rhythms aren’t quite as complex as Refused’s were, but staying tight is still quite an accomplishment. For the show, dissonance was a virtue. Not tonally but musically, dissonance that created the feeling of unresolved tension with a dash of anger and confusion. The Blood Brothers certainly don’t candy coat any of the tension they feel; if anything they put salt on the wound with rabid discussion and urgent screaming.
The Blood Brothers are taking punk where it probably needs to go, charged emotions, tension, dense guitars, lack of violence and a passion that can only be exemplified with their stellar live show. So even though the young men in The Blood Brothers aren’t playing folk and don’t really provoke thoughts of Bob Dylan, their live show exemplifies a mature band ready to say something about life and push the boundaries of music.