Review Summary: Despite having a robust and acclaimed career, The Blood Brothers save their worst and laziest effort for last.
Once the darlings of the post-hardcore genre, The Blood Brothers have been noted for releasing some of the best records of the 2000s, ranging from the ferocious outings of their early days to their more restrained, creative works later on. While most of their records are valiant efforts with plenty envelope-pushing ideas and avant-garde ideals, I can’t help find a heap of terrible faults with their final effort,
Young Machetes. Given that this record is the very last by one of the most creative bands of the genre, what exactly went wrong with their knockout punch?
First off,
Young Machetes, despite having a lot of issues, carries some of the best songs the band has ever done. The barn-burning opener “Set Fire To The Face On Fire” is an anxious number, filled with muscular screeching, restless drumming and powerful gang vocals. “Camouflage, Camouflage” drives home a sense of fun with a funky bass line and very catchy chorus before tastefully sinking into a sombre mid-section. Finally, “Lazer Life” is a bouncy dance-punk number that expertly evolves it’s energetic, playful verses and catchy choruses into the chaos found in the bridge and outro. These songs are not only the best of what
Young Machete has to offer, but they also easily belong on any ideal Blood Brother’s greatest hits album.
But the sad thing to say is that, outside of the aforementioned three songs,
Young Machetes really struggles to find any good ideas. A ton of songs, including “We Ride Skeletal Lightning”, “Nausea Shred Yr Head”, “Huge Gold AK-47” and “Johnny Rider” come racing out of the gate with a punchy feel and an interesting idea, but nothing really evolves from it and the songs quickly become stagnant and boring. “Rat Rider” and “Vital Beach” are decent efforts, but both are incredibly transparent because they both resort to shouting the song name over and over again in means of creating a hook (“Rat Rider! Rat Rider! YEAH!”/ “Vital Beach, Vital Beach, Vital Beach! YEAH!”). Every song mentioned sounds like an undeveloped, last-minute effort, and there’s really no point in going back and listening to them over and over again.
And then there’s just the stuff that’s downright embarrassing. “Spit Shine Your Black Clouds” is another dance-punk effort, but it sounds completely dull and lifeless when compared to “Lazer Life”. “1, 2, 3, 4 Guitars” ironically has very little to do with guitars, and is instead a strange, weaving, experimental jazz/latin romp that really goes no where. “Lift The Veil, Kiss The Tank”, despite picking up during the second half, probably has the worst intro guitar riff to any song I’ve ever heard. And finally, the closing duo of “Streetwars/Exotic Foxholes” and “Giant Swan” both drag immensely while giving off a “what is the point of this?” vibe. While The Blood Brothers have had some quirky songs through-out their career, nothing they’ve ever done has been this incompetent.
So excluding a couple of truly great songs,
Young Machetes is largely the soundtrack of a burnt-out band grasping at straws in means of trying to create something unique. Given the large array of undeveloped ideas and questionable efforts on
Young Machetes, it’s all too clear that The Blood Brothers’s creative well had dried up completely. It’s a little unfitting that one of the most extraordinary bands of post-hardcore would leave out on such a sour note, but at least
Young Machetes has enough strengths to save it from being completely abysmal.
