If you were looking for something abnormal, a little off kilter and maybe slightly unnerving, than you’ve come to the right place. Crimes, the follow-up to their shrieking, screeching, nails-on-chalkboard breakthrough Burn Piano Island, Burn, has taken THE BLOOD BROTHERS in an even more abstract direction. While still retaining their unrivaled sass and spazzcore tendencies, Crimes is a distant departure from the more linear (can I even say that?) Burn Piano Island, Burn. The group still integrates unsettling, bipolar sing/shriek lyrics by two vocalists and launch themselves from melodic to spazztacular at unexplained, unexcused moments, but they’ve added new elements and tools to their sound. This isn’t the BLOOD BROTHERS of old, but rather evidence of how the ever-changing BLOOD BROTHERS never get old. The lyrical violence and standard freakouts aside, THE BLOOD BROTHERS are reaching out into fresh directions with each track. The intro, “Feed Me to the Forrest”, sets the standard for weirdness, starting things off with a bump and grind type of electronic vibe that, if it weren’t for the screaming of Johnny Whitney, wouldn’t even sound like a BLOOD BROTHERS tune at all. Along with “guitararmy”, THE BLOOD BROTHERS have made it pretty evident that they don’t care much for typical openers, but than again there isn’t that much typical about them in the first place. “Trash Flavored Trash” is a slightly more traditional BLOOD BROTHERS track, featuring an old-school punk vibe on acid. “Love Rhymes With Hideous Car Wreck” is just flat out strange, with Whitney departing from his shrieks to work in a psuedo-falsetto sound before rambling “Love, love, love, love…” over slightly eerie guitar and bass lines. While odd, “Love Rhymes…” is one of the stronger songs on Crimes, featuring the versatility of the band. While Burn Piano Island, Burn was a blitzing, nonstop storm of psychotic guitars, bipolar screaming and a hail of attack sounds, Crimes is slightly more subdued. Rather than a constant assault, THE BLOOD BROTHERS opt to lull the listener into the tracks more often (although they still pick their times to go absolutely nuts, as shown in “My First Kiss at the Public Execution”). There is more of an electronic vibe in Crimes, and the band reaches out for newer sounds in general. “Live At the Apocolypse Cabaret” bounces from creepy to upbeat and poppy on a whim in a weird BEATLES meets BEETLEJUICE meld. “Devastator”, the closer, is just that, a devastatingly intense and driving song that shows the group at its nastiest. There are enough spazzcore tracks on here to appease the diehard Burn, Piano Island, Burn fans, but THE BLOOD BROTHERS have made an honest effort to not trap themselves within one genre, even if they still do that genre better than anyone else. At times, Crimes can be slightly irritating. We’ve come to expect a certain sound from THE BLOOD BROTHERS, and while I can certainly appreciate the band trying to experiment (and it’s not as if Crimes is a disappointment), if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I really would prefer to hear thirteen tracks of straight-up incoherent screams and noodling guitars, but hopefully Crimes will prove to merely be the growing pains of a band moving to better things.

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