The Blood Brothers Focus On The Abstract

11/03/06 6:30pm

by Noah Love (CHARTattack)

With Burn, Piano Island, Burn, The Blood Brothers established themselves as a new and dominant force in dance-metal. Crimes put them on the map as biting political commentators leading up to the 2004 presidential election. But with Young Machetes, The Blood Brothers have gone beyond politics.

The lyrics are almost completely abstract, the songs have deep and full instrumentation, and Jordan Blilie and Johnny Whitney do a lot more singing than screaming. Dare we say The Blood Brothers are growing up?

"Crimes was kind of our biggest departure from what might be considered our traditional sound," Whitney explains before playing a record store show as part of a U.S. tour. "Since we'd already made that departure, it was a little easier to sort of free ourselves up and push onward with different styles and different kinds of ideas without feeling constricted by this base hardcore impetus that our band was sort of founded in."

Crimes was an overt attack on George W. Bush's administration and the state of American society since his election. The Blood Brothers couldn't do an interview about the record without talking politics.

Perhaps that's why, on Young Machetes, they've abandoned the message entirely. Songs like "Set Fire To The Face On Fire" and "You're The Dream Unicorn" have titles that are about as meaningful as their lyrics.

"I wrote most of the lyrics with the intent of using them on another Neon Blonde record," Whitney explains, referring to his side project with bandmate Cody Votolato. "That sort of just didn't happen, so I had all this really great material and a lot of it just ended up being Blood Brother lyrics.

"It was kind of a conscious decision I made, just to make things more abstract and read less like a unifying statement of something one way or another, and more just fractured and saying things but not in a direct and blunt way. That came out of, in Crimes, trying to be sort of as topical a lyricist and just not having any interest in doing that on this record."

Fans of Piano Island are probably going to be a bit spooked by the band's latest LP, even moreso than they might have been by Crimes. There are no less than three songs that you might even call ballads (I mean, if you call the title track from the last record a ballad). Most of the metal is replaced by a fusion of punk and garage rock.

Whitney, for his part, would rather tackle new challenges than try to please only the people who worship the Brothers' debut. "I try not to get irritated by the fact that, at every single show of ours, people call out for us to play songs off Piano Island, because I think if I were in their place I might do the same. To me, it's a really immature record, and the songwriting, when I listen back to it, the ideas don't seem very well-formulated. Personally, I'm just not that interested in aggressive, chaotic, somewhat metal-y music.

"So when I listen back to it, there's songs I still like, and there's songs from it that I still like playing live. But if I were in a band that sounded like that right now, I'd probably be a little bummed."

One consistent problem for The Blood Brothers has been touring. Their tour last fall with Coheed & Cambria was mostly a dud. But if they don't play support, they face the more difficult option of headlining tours, which are riskier and more costly. That's why they couldn't be happier to have hooked with Austin, Texas goth rockers ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead.

"We're in a very hard place as a band because bands that we respect and that we listen to that are bigger than us that we could go on tour with don't really want to tour with us," Whitney says sheepishly. "Generally our options are to do headlining tours and take our friends with us, or occasionally make a compromise and do a tour with a band we don't share much commonality with, but a band that will allow for us to play for people who wouldn't normally come to our shows.

"But Trail Of Dead was a perfect match. We really like their music and they seem like really nice people."

Here are the dates for The Blood Brothers' Canadian tour with Trail Of Dead:

Nov. 5 Toronto, ON @ The Phoenix
Nov. 6 Montreal, QC @ La Tulipe
Dec. 9 Victoria, BC @ Sugar
Dec. 10 Vancouver, BC @ Croatian Cultural Centre
Dec. 11 Calgary, AB @ MacEwan Hall
Dec. 12 Edmonton, AB @ Ed's/Edmonton Events Centre