Customer Reviews

Burn Piano Island, Burn

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Waiting for someone to continue what Refused called, "The Shape of Punk to Come?" All the punks, goths, screamers, rockers, and dancers that are looking for something to change your gray world into something worth looking at - this is it. The Blood Brothers will open your eyes and ears to the possibilites of what music can do when it is truly original. Since getting the CD, I can't bear to listen to anything else without feeling like it is missing something. You will scream with it, dance to it, and sing along in all the melodic and hectic madness that is Burn Piano Island, Burn.

Alright, straight up, i have to say that i am OBSESSED with this cd, i really believe it is the best cd ever realeased, as far as ive heard at least, since bands like botch and converge have come out. the blood bros have changed the face of hardcore with this cd for all who have listened to it, nothing compares really. analyzing the aspects, ill start with the vocals. jordan blilie and johnny are perfect for this, their voices contrast and sound beautiful in every song. jordan has the trademark high, whiney, snotty voice that you either love or hate, and johnny has the undertone voice and the best hardcore scream ive heard in a while. as for the guitars, this guy is nuts. using chord progressions youd never even think of and timings that will flipp you upside down, he is also perfect for the part. the bassist is also amazing, playing bass the way its supposed to, and going beyond with some odd timings and backing the beat and guitars perfectly. and the drummer i think is probably the most talented of the group, keeping the most complicated beats ive ever heard, just undescribable. but my favorite thing about these gyuys are the lyrics they write, which you need to read to believe. the most amazing things ive ever read, all in which depict demented imagery that is so complicated, itll make your head spin. i would analyze every track for you, but theyre all just about equally as good. the best, i think, on the cd is the 6 Nightmares At the Pinball Masquerade, listen to this over and over and figure out the lyrics, itll change you. in closing, if you are looking for the next step in music, and arent afraid of something totaly different, pick this album up. as for those who hate the blood brothers, dont fear what you dont understand, in a few years every band youre listening to is going to try to sound like this, and we will all look back at this cd and see the blood brothers a few steps ahead of the game.

I don't have the proper vocabulary to describe this album, so I'll just try and keep it simple. Because when you think about it, the Blood Brothers keep it simple. One AMAZING drummer. One superb bassist who also occasionally plays the keyboards/noise distroter. One talented guitarist. And two vocalists/screamers. I could be corny and say this all adds up to one of the heaviest and most original bands around. Corny or not, it's the truth.

The Blood Brothers have taken a simplistic approach to being heavy; they don't use three distorted guitars and vocal affects to be heavy. They create some of the hardest hitting music by just playing the hell out of what they have. Ferocious guitars and powerful drumming set the backbone, as the bass and distorted keyboards only add to the heaviess. The two voaclists are rarely quiet, especially at the same time. Their dynamic ability to play off of each others screams leads to a whole new dimension of vocal heaviness.

Until I saw the Blood Brothers live this summer, I contributed their heaviness and talent soley to production trickery and manipulation. While I never thought it possible, the Blood Brothers were heavier, louder, angrier, and more talented live. Every song they played, new and old, sounded better than it did on CD. The number one attribute of an amazing and talented band is how they perform live, and the Blood Brothers are one of if not the best live band I have ever seen.

And now for the crazy metaphor to describe the band...oh forget it, just take punk, jazz (yeah I said it) and hardcore, take all the best elements of each; the screams, the unforgivingly heavy and fast beats, spontaneous starts and stops and fits of creativity, and you'll begin to understand the sound of this band. This is possibly the Blood Brothers best CD; but I can say that it is the best example of their talent and creativity. I think that "Burn Piano Island Burn" is the band at its creative plateau, and it's only a question of how long they can mantain that level of intensity and creativity before the weight of being original brings them down to their demise. I pray that these skinny kids from Seatle can handle the weight of being one of the most orignal, talented, and entertainnig bands for decades to come.

Buy this CD, along with their older material which isn't as well recorded or produced, but is played just as heavy and fast as "Burn Piano Island Burn". Then go see them live, and get up close so you can be fully blown away.

My favorites are "USA Nails, Burn Piano Island Burn, Six Nightmares at the Pinball Masquerade, and I Know Where...".

Those rowdy, sassy Seattle boys known as The Blood Brothers are at it again. Their major label debut is entitled, "Burn, Piano Island, Burn". Piano Island was originally mentioned on their break through first album, "This Adultry Is Ripe", appeared on shirts, and now it's in the title of one of their records. Many people have been eagerly awaiting this album to see if "the 'Brothers sold out" signing to Artist Direct. The verdict? They haven't. Different? Sure! Still good? Of course. As good as the other two? Not really. Still better than 90% of major label releases? Absolutely.

"Burn, Piano Island, Burn" is definitely not a creation by greedy media executives and industry experts who try to dictate to the artists what to do and when. These five guys would never do anything like that. The album is a product of sass, alcohol, and a couple twisted minds. Hardcore parts have become more sparse, however the sass has been turned up to eleven ("why don't you just make ten louder?" "...this one goes to eleven."). Not to say there isn't a whole mess load of screaming and writhing... because there is. What has happened is actually that there are the same amount of spazzy, chaotic parts but they have made this record about 45 minutes (25% longer than their other two full lengths) and all the extra time on there is more sass. In turn, making the sass to kick [booty] ratio swing towards the prior.

Different is definitely an adjective that fits this album. Length of this album is different than previous ones, there's a song with an acoustic guitar, each song has more parts to it, however, the album shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone who has been following them. Their sound has progressed emensely since their split 7"s and self titled 7". "March On, Electric Children" ended with an all piano ballad entangled with screams and sexual imagery, the sass had been turned up to an eight or nine. The Blood Brothers have just continued with their natural progression and it seems to be working for them. They have more money so that means better equipment, more time to work on music, et cetera. Artist Direct is a good thing for them, and it seems to be making them happy. I support this album and hope it does really well and makes them even more well known. They sure deserve it.

If people liked "This Adultery Is Ripe" or "March On, Electric Children" they will like this one too, as long as you can handle some more melodic parts, sass, and some sing alongs. Check it out, it's worth it, but it's not for everyone.

Dance to it: 3
Weirdness: 10
Catchiness: 3
Originality: 10
Abrasiveness: 9
Self Indulgence: 6
Experimentation: 6
Desperation: 1
Believability: 9
Darkness: 4
Hardcore-ness: 10
Cover Art: 10
Genre Purity: 5
Offensiveness: 2
Accessibility: 1
Notes: At times mildly reminiscent of Dead Kennedy's, The Locust, At the Drive In, Refused and Fugazi...lyrically and organizationally eccentric punk-rooted hardcore that's oozing with esoteric integrity.

Funny story actually...I hated this CD when I first got it. I tried to sell it to some used cd store and they didn't want it I guess cause they've never heard of it. It was too insanse. I loved "Guitarmy" but that was only a little more than 30 seconds long. But...like all great albums, this thing grew on me like a fungus. A good fungus of course. One that wreaks of originality. The insanity of this cd is exactly what makes it so great. Along with blood curdling screams is a small hint of dare I say "Melody" in some songs. Choose any song on this cd and cut it into 3 or 4 pieces and it'll sound like 3 or 4 different songs. This is punk in its truest form.

there is a fine line between twisted post-modern genius and pretentious art-school nonsense.
one look at the song titles on the reverse of this cd would suggest it would fall into the latter. random, semantically redundant collaborations of words and phrases portraying some form of 'abstract-metaphor' that anyone other than the artist just "wouldn't get" prompt images of 'if you need to ask you dont need to know', 'kid A really was radiohead's best album' art punks, with ironic haircuts. the nonsensical cut and paste/my 4 year old cousin could do a better pen and ink drawing than that cover art does little to dispell this image.

how disarming then to nonchalantly place the cd in my stereo and have my philistine ears blasted by the most discordant yet intrinsically beautiful cacaphony since converge's 'petitioning the empty sky'.
at first this album lives up to all the conceited expectations. kicking things off with a 40 second blast of post-at the drive-in art-noise, all jittery guitars and fingernails-on-a-blackboard vocals, leaves me wondering whether my hyphen key will make it to the end of the review. but unlike fellow peddlers of high-brow spazzcore the locust, blood brothers sound far too ridiculous to be massaging their own egos with their unique self-indulgent brand of punk. they seem to be having too much fun. this is not, however, ridiculous in a bad way just in the sense that you will never have heard anything like this before.

dual vocalists jordan and johnny reject traditional call and response structures coming across as a pair of restless children squabling for the limelight in a sequence of screeching tantrums. anywhere else it would be aural torture but within the confines of their own warped world, perversely, it sounds the most logical medium to vent their musical frustrations. throughout the album guitars switch between jangling rhythms and serrated, spiteful blasts of bittersweet noise and drums fidget and twitch like a nervous cat.

yet despite its distracted exterior it is an album which conceals something far more beautiful. amid the off kilter percussion and insane-asylum vocals lay sublimely delicate melodies. the glockenspiel in 'ambulance vs ambulance' or the piano led outro of 'every breath is a bomb' show that beneath the layers of spiky riffs beats a heart of opulent melody.
and it is the ability to allow these melodies, no matter how understated, to define and make sense of the confusion of noise that is the blood brothers' true artistic genius.

There has been some mixed reviews for this album, with some good reasons. This album, rather this band, is not for everyone. I personally find this cd to be worth every penny i spent, I can't stop listening to it. But, this band is out there. I have yet to hear anything like it. I recommend you give it a try... you may hate it, then again you may love it just like I do. Songs like "F***ing's Greatest Hits," "Cecilia and the Silhouette Saloon," "Ambulance Vs. Ambulance," and "Burn, Piano Island, Burn" are all great tracks that will hopefully keep you coming for more. Also all the songs off their new record "Crimes" are all amazing. That album is an album to be reckoned with. Although "piano island" and "crimes" are a bit more branched off than their previous albums like "This Adultry is Ripe." But trust me, old BB fans will not be let down.

give it a try, you may like it you may not.
you may not fall in love in the first listen, but like i said, give it a try.

Burn Piano Island Burn is a compilation of high intensity, creative, experimental, amazing sounding music. The raw high pitched screaming is crazyness and awesome. This is definately one of my favorite albums and one of my favroite bands. If you are a fan of any screaming, hardcore, or anything along those lines, this cd is a great pickup, and in my opinion, should be in everyone's cd player or case. It's amazing.

I am not usually into this sort of music, but this album is amazing. I would definetely recommend it to anyone interested in the hardcore scene. Despite the generous amount of screaming, the songs are still insanely catchy. I find myself singing "USA NAILS" constantly. A MUST HAVE ALBUM FOR RECORD COLLECTORS