the Blood Brothers

Still I'm sad to see their demise. Even Henry Rollins agreed that they were saving rock and roll. And now we have Head Wound City and Jaguar Love, with Cody Votolato being in both bands (barely noticeably, I wouldn't know it was his work just by listening to it). What happened, man? Neither band is as good as the Brothers were. It seems polarized now. Head Wound is all 'core and Jag is all goofy-weirdo-pop, and it pains me to listen to it. The Brothers seemed to reconcile the opposing genres, making some really remarkable and exciting music, despite their final album, 2006's Young Machetes, being lackluster and their weakest overall. Hey, I still liked it. "You're The Dream Unicorn" is GOLD! It was probably the usual creative differences that tear a band apart that tore the Brothers apart, and I just can't get over it.

It reminds me of At The Drive-In so much. That band reconciled the sort of proggy "experimental" music with a Drive Like Jehu-post-hardcore type of sound, though they certainly weren't that experimental, it was more post-'core. Then they split after the heavy, intense Relationship Of Command into two horribly lesser bands, Sparta and the Mars Volta. I love both post-'core and proggy weirdness, but both bands seem to do bare-bones editions of those genres, making them so mediocre and boring and not worth my time. I hate so much when bands are neither "excellent" nor "terrible," all in between and such. It's frustrating when they are simply mediocre, as Sparta and the Mars Volta are. There's better and there's worse than both in those genres they do, so why bother? Who wants pseudo-Krautrock or lazy, mod-rock-tinged post-hardcore? There's no need when Can and Fugazi have excellent albums available forever.

Anyway, I overall have some mixed feelings. I'm sad that it's over for the Brothers, but I'm glad since their last album was their worst and they couldn't continue on forever (if only Aerosmith could take a hint...). Bands must break up, otherwise they will start to suck or just end up releasing the same album over and over again, which I guess is sometimes OK, if you like that one band or that one sound or whatever so much that you can't get enough of it. But for the sake of music and originality and progress, it just gets boring when bands exist forever and make the usual old crap again and again, and again and again and again.