This Seattle five-piece came up on the proggier end of screamo, a style of emo hardcore characterized by throat-shredding vocals, bad hairstyles, and the capacity to provoke scorn from nearly every listener over legal drinking age. But after releasing their third full-length, Burn, Piano Island, Burn–which may have been the genre’s peak–the Blood Brothers decided to reinvent themselves, combining glam’s prissy swagger and no wave’s aggro noise on 2004’s Crimes. They’re pushing forward on the new Young Machetes (V2)–if the songs on Crimes were refined, these are epic–but also reaching back, playing with the same self-immolating energy they had when they were wrecking it in all-ages clubs. I know a lot of people who have Pink Floyd and the Locust in their record collections, but I can’t think of anyone who’s tried to play them both at once.
