Bonded by Blood
The Blood Brothers + Ross Robinson + your ears = holy shit
By Erik Fong

Is it possible? Can producer Ross Robinson, the “Bob Rock of nu-metal,” have good taste in music? As the man who deserves all the credit and the blame for producing albums by Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, Korn and the reincarnated Vanilla Ice, thus furthering the “Adidas rock” movement, he’s an easy target for hatred. But wait… not so fast.

Much like Claudia Schiffer’s marriage to David Copperfield, Robinson’s relationships with those bands were just another gig. It was business – and hey, we all need to eat. Those who question Robinson’s tastes need look no further than the latest acquisition on his ARTISTdirect subsidiary, I AM Recordings: The Cure. He’s been involved in some terrible music, but his signing of one of his favorite bands of all-time – and a band that doesn’t completely eat shit, no less – reminds us that he is, first and foremost, a music fan.

Robinson’s latest discovery – with whom he worked both production-wise and label-wise – is The Blood Brothers, a Seattle band that he handpicked out of respect and admiration. The group’s latest album, Burn, Piano Island, Burn, has received critical acclaim from such notable online music magazines as, well, this one.

While it’s about as easy to dissect the music of The Blood Brothers as it is to determine that stench in your house when you get back from a three-week vacation, the band’s philosophy is focused on punk, in the most wild and non-conformist sense of the word. Entangled in the band’s tornado of sonic chaos are pounding drums, Bad Brains-ish punkified vocal melodies and dissonant guitars, with random melodic piano runs and acoustic guitar strums for extra flavor.

Somewhere on the spectrum of ferocity and originality near The Dillinger Escape Plan and The Locust, The Blood Brothers’ use of punk-driven vocal lines is refreshing in a time of over-doctored pop singers. What comes off to the untrained ear is random noise, but every note, every bar and every beat are groomed to razor-sharp precision. And then the “don’t give a fuck” attitude takes it all apart. But it still stays together. Exactly. You’ll be hard-pressed to find any sort of groove or continuity time signature-wise – and to find such continuity would be admitting your own severe mental imbalance.

With all of the members in their early-twenties, it’s exciting to know that The Blood Brothers have plenty more terrible years ahead of them to become even more fucked up. And in the spirit of Paula Abdul’s riveting collaboration with MC Skat Cat, the attracting of opposite influences is what keeps the music of The Blood Brothers so unpredictable. “All of us have our own influences and shit that we want to do musically,” explains guitarist Cody Votolato. “When we all come together, it just sort of formulates into one semi-cohesive thing.”

The band’s influences include everyone from the Jesus Lizard to Nick Cave to Drive Like Jehu to Bright Eyes – none of whom sound anything like The Blood Brothers. Individually, drummer Mark Gajadhar sounds like an inebriated John Bonham on PCP and steroids. Bassist Morgan Henderson’s intestine-jarring tone is reminiscent of the regurgitation scene in Stand By Me, during which Davey “Lard Ass” Hogan’s stomach is churning multiple blueberry pies. Guitarist Cody Votolato sets the mood – and the moods change quicker than you can say “Erik Fong is the sexiest man ever” (go ahead, say it and find out!), from smooth, syncopated gallops to sedated acoustic parts to ear-piercing screeches. And having two vocalists adds a new dimension as well; Jordan Blilie and Johnny Whitney scream in two different vocal registers, creating a double-attack of snooty, punk/hardcore melodies. All attitude and no finesse – it’s primitive melody on their own terms. If it’s possible to give a shit and not give a shit all at the same time, The Blood Brothers’ vocal lines are prime example. If anything, the only things The Blood Brothers have in common with each other musically are a short attention span and the urge to fuck with people’s senses.

Oh, and for those who have been dying to uncover the secret to getting a recording contract, let The Blood Brothers teach you how in this simple two-step process:

1. Wait for a hot-shot producer/label owner you’ve never heard of to call you.
2. Sign the contract.

That’s exactly how complicated it was to get a gig with Ross Robinson. Cody elaborates (though a story this easy doesn’t require much elaboration): “He just heard one of our records and contacted us. We didn’t know who he was. We checked it out and met with him, and he was into letting us do what we wanted to do.”

Done and done. But did a band as unique as The Blood Brothers have any hesitation in affiliating itself with the “Bob Rock of nu-metal”?

“There was hesitation simply because we never had a producer,” Cody says. “We never messed around with that sort of thing. [Our previous records were] never a huge production when we recorded. So there was hesitation about that, like, ‘Do we need some guy who’s going to tell us how to play our songs?’ But he made it clear that that’s not what it was going to be like, which it wasn’t.”

We must give credit where credit is due; there’s something to be said for a producer who can make Vanilla Ice only kind of suck, and help turn voice-cracking pseudo-rapper Fred Durst into a superstar. Unlike pop’s puppet hit-making producers, Robinson’s production style focuses on bringing out each band’s strengths. “He’s really into drums,” Cody explains, “so he pushed Mark really hard to try different things on drums. He wasn’t too nitpicky with anything that we wanted to do. He brought the vibe out.”

And again, to be fair, not all of Robinson’s production has been for terrible artists. He’s also produced At the Drive-In, as well as Sepultura’s Roots. But it’s safe to say that Robinson deserves another notch in the “win” category for his work on The Blood Brothers’ Burn, Piano Island, Burn. And as long as The Blood Brothers never sing about how they know that we be lovin’ this shit right here in some poor attempt to sound tough, we’ll give them a notch in the “win” category as well.

Purchase The Blood Brothers' latest album, Burn, Piano Island, Burn, through Amazon.com.