The Blood Brothers

'Young Machetes,' full of ferocity, draws comparison to jazz

By: Mike Mahon

Posted: 10/10/06

The Blood Brothers
Young Machetes
Genre: Post-hardcore
Sounds like: Refused, The Mars Volta
Db level: 86

Cigarette-stained wallpaper is peeling off of the metaphorical walls of your ear canal. Blood, dirt and broken glass from the chandelier above cover the floor. The faint echo of screaming still reverberates. "Young Machetes" just finished blasting through your headphones.

The Blood Brothers' fifth LP has that kind of effect on listeners - like it or not. The double vocal attack of Jordan Billie and Johnny Whitney shreds through your head like a virus. The ferocity of their rhythm section draws some comparisons to The Mars Volta, but bassist Morgan Henderson likens their creative process to bassist and jazz great Charles Mingus.

"People would hear him and call it jazz, but in his mind he was creating modern black Classical music," Henderson said.

It's no wonder Morgan busts out with an upright bass on the latter half of "Street Wars/Exotic Foxholes." What would normally be breaking musical boundaries actually helps define The Blood Brothers' sound. Following up with the euphonious textures of its last release, "Crimes," the band continues to add more themes, more sounds and more angst to its music. For a fair-weather listener, it might be hard to grasp, for the same reason jazz has struggled to gain popularity in today's world.

Although jam-packed into only two minutes, "Nausea Shreds Yr Head" has all the elements that make this album what it is. The drumming is brutally persistent and the vocals are magnificently violent. And yet as distant as The Blood Brothers are from The Village People, the chorus still has a bit of disco that makes you want to dance while you're headbanging.

From start to finish, The Blood Brothers never let up. Songs like "You're the Dream Unicorn!," "Vital Beach" and "Set Fire to the Face on Fire" have the same glorious amount of militancy and malaise. And while Charles Mingus probably wouldn't have imagined he'd help inspire a progressive hardcore band, "Young Machetes" proves that good music is good music regardless.