The Blood Brothers sound angry. Listen to any one of the avant-hardcore act's several stellar LPs, and you'll hear a cacophony of screams, shrieks and cries. So why are they avant-hardcore? Because bands like the Blood Brothers and the Locust are disassociated from a movement that has been stigmatized into a genre for thick-necked weightlifters obsessed with gridiron fantasies.
"I don't think that any of us have identified with hardcore for a little while now," said singer Jordan Blilie. "There were hardcore bands that I really loved and connected to when we first started out. But it's been a genre of music that hasn't held much for us in recent years."
So if they're not listening to hardcore, where does the intensity of the Blood Brothers come from?
"I think from the very beginning we wanted to be in a band that was fun to play in, so [the screaming] just naturally came about," Blilie said. "Sometimes it comes from a sense of frustration by the things we observe around us. I don't consider us to be particularly angry people."
"Crimes," the band's latest record, is definitely a product of observation. Soccer moms, NASCAR dads, political apathy, incompetent media and our country at war all resonate on the album. And in "Crimes," a bad state of affairs makes for some pretty damn good music.
It's also a result of the Blood Brothers' natural evolution. Early records like "March on Electric Children" and "This Adultery is Ripe" saw a young, hungry band reveling in guitars and screams. "Crimes," like critical-smash "Burn Piano Island, Burn!" finds the Brothers experimenting in new sounds, new instruments, time changes, melodies and abstract deliveries.
They've also become more selective about their tour-mates. Old tours with bands like the Used and Glassjaw found countless Hot Topic causalities giving the band the middle finger and calling them faggots. But Blilie and Co. have learned how to deal with these obnoxious hecklers.
"Its quite simple," Blilie said. "Once you strip them of [their] anonymity, you've won. A heckler's power is in the fact that they don't think they're going to get called out. I feel that any one of us can say something more intelligent to a heckler than what they're coming at us with. We usually just embarrass them."
Gone are tours with pop-punk stalwarts. Now they'll cross the country with more like-minded acts like Cursive, Eastern Youth and Against Me.
"We'd much rather go on tour with bands we love and admire and want to be out on the road with," Blilie said. "We also like to tour with bands that sound nothing like us."
The Blood Brothers play the Black Cat on Tuesday with Against Me and True North. Tickets are $10.
