Blood Brothers

If film director David Cronenberg (Videodrome, Dead Ringers) authored bruised and bent punk rock instead of films about twin gynecologists creating tools terrifyingly inappropriate for use on a woman’s delicate parts, it might sound something like Crimes, the second major-label outing from the Blood Brothers. The Blood Brothers’ calling card is a shrill, screaming twin vocal assault backed by a battering rhythm section and straight-razor, paint-peeling spiky guitars. Not for the easily sickened, The Blood Brothers’ frantic shrieking outrageously defines them and yet may keep many listeners at bay. Crimes is a twisted, horny rant, overwrought and wailing against the confinement of commercial culture and its laminate skin. Consider the album’s frenzied highlight “Trash Flavored Trash”—“take me to the pit of celebrity pregnancies/ I want to wear the skin of a magazine baby.” Crimes is a disturbing masterpiece, an amusement park of broken mirrors, rusted parts, and fragrant with the decaying surface dreams of American society, gorgeously pregnant with certain, impending collapse.