Crimes:Blood Brothers

Crimes
Label: V2

Genre: artsy hard-core perfection

Rating: 7 of 7

Last year my entire view on hardcore was completely changed. With the release of the Blood Brothers last album …Burn, Piano Island, Burn, the bar of hardcore, creativity and originality in music was officially raised to almost unreachable levels. Every album since has just seemed to fall short. So how do the Brothers respond to this? They release a bigger record on a bigger label, even though the previous album was only released last year, and they spent most of the in-between time touring. If that is not impressive enough, Crimes takes all of the essential characteristics of Piano Island, condenses them into mostly 3-minute bursts and somehow create an album that retains the same aesthetic while clearly progressing. The frontman duo of Jordan Whitney, who seems to have raised his voice an octave while polishing the edges, and Jordan Blilie, the creepy/sexy tenor compliment, return with a new set of imaginatively unparalleled lyrics and screaming interchanges. They are backed with catchy and dense post-rock explosions care of Cody Votolato (guitar), Morgan Henderson (bass) and Mark Gajadhar (drums). Structure-wise, the band has taken a step back due to the trouble they had playing live the extreme complexity of Piano Island. Using a new producer, John Goodmanson (Blonde Redhead, Sleater-Kinney), the Brothers have matured through simplification, spitting out 13 songs of art-core perfection that only clock over 4 minutes twice. Looks like the Seattle quintet knocked the bar up another notch.

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