Blessed By A Broken Heart has potential to be the most hated band on Earth

Blessed By A Broken Heart is my favorite post-ironic Christian hair-metal crunkcore scene band from Canada. I know what you are thinking: Wat. I'll admit that this band was enough to make even my head spin with post-modern amazement at first, but bear with me. It turns out they are just the scene version of Kirk Cameron, shilling for Jesus with a flatiron instead of an NIV Bible. I will deconstruct them for you and explain why I think they could end up being hated even more than Brokencyde.

So. Much. Irony. Urge to kill rising...

With that out of the way, I introduce you to Blessed By A Broken Heart and list the reasons why you will hate them. A great place to start is their song "Mic Skillz II" in which they combine trance, hair metal and rap while lyrically referencing TMNT, Snoop Dogg, Technotronic, and steal a video clip from Final Fantasy VII.

"It ain't nothin' but a scene thing baby." Mind=blown

1. Excessive wackiness, zaniness and cleverness
Nobody likes a tryhard, and BBABH definitely try way too hard to impress you with what I'm sure they think are their hilarious antics. Look, I get it: they're "in on the joke." The fact that their entire image is a big ironic joke is fine, the problem is that it's not funny, it's just a tiresome, transparent cry for attention from a bunch of churchy dorks who are so painfully square that they feel guilty for drinking a Diet Pepsi.

You can practically taste their burning desire for peer approval. Like the lab rats who furiously pound the lever that delivers cocaine into their veins, BBABH thirst for your attention as though they had been stranded in the desert for a month and your validation of their ham-fisted persona is a pitcher of ice water. They wait eagerly for you to catch one of the references in their song and tell them how clever their lyrics are, how "random" the song is, and tell them they're "so crazy." They want it so badly that they go so far as to lyrically roadmap their references in "Mic Skillz II":

Check check, what
Now you now your letters
Learn your numbers
Right after this Beverly Hills Cop part

Groan.

Protip: if you have to explain the joke to me, it's not funny anymore (if it ever was in the first place). It just makes you a desperate tryhard. It's not unlike the "Pretty Fly For A White Guy" trope in which a white TV/movie character uses a piece of "urban" slang then looks expectantly at the camera, waiting for laffs. For example, maybe there is a grandmother telling you how great Tropicana orange juice is, and she concludes her pitch by mugging for the camera and saying "Word to your mother!" Only in this case, BBABH turns toward the camera with a smug grin on their face and says, "Pump up the jam!" Either way, it's enough to make you wish for a cyanide capsule to chomp on as an IRL rage quit.

I can haz attention?

There is a time and a place for zaniness and wacky jokes, but moderation is the key. I don't think anybody gave BBABH the rulebook, though, because their zaniness knows no bounds. They never, ever hesitate to pat themselves on the back for making a forced, hackneyed joke that's about as subtle, sophisticated and funny as Hee-Haw. Like in "Mic Skillz II" where they simply growl (in pseudo-death metal vocals) "Cookie Monster!" Yes, we get it: death metal vocals sound like Cookie Monster, I thought that joke was funny too... in 1990.

The only thing in this photo that's funny is the singer's Jesus tattoo.

Unless their shtick is to be deliberately unfunny they have failed miserably at doing anything other than disappointing me. If they are being deliberately unfunny then they are fucking brilliant, achieving levels of genius that only Hipster Runoff can approach, with its layers upon layers of irony. But I am going to go out on a limb and say that these churchy simpletons aren't masters of postmodern humor, but simply much less funny than they think they are.

Ha ha ha!! I get it: You bought some "hilarious" early 90s clothes at a thrift store, then LOLed with your friends as you worked yourselves into a frenzy of anticipation about all the congratulatory comments you would get when you put the pictures up on MySpace. LOL!!! You're so funny and CRAZY!! Look out Andy Samberg, here comes the zany bro in the wacky clothes!!

2. Amateurish marketing
I'm willing to bet that these fuckholes sat down with one of their lawyer dads in his home office and put together a business plan before they ever played a single note of music. He even gave them a loan to cover the marketing budget (he's kind of kicking himself for giving it to them at 4.5% APR, though, because now that credit markets are so much tighter he could have gotten a much better rate).

This song is actually a pretty great moshglam tune and has some really subtle, funny touches like the hilarious tom sound.

Much like their bad jokes, the problem isn't that they are relentless self-promoters, but that they are terrible at it. It is painful to see these tards fumble one play after the next just like how when you're watching a Little League game you want to slap one of the kids and yell, "How the fuck did you miss that pitch you worthless piece of shit!? It was right over the goddamn plate, he might has well have handed it to you on a silver fucking platter!!"

Dudes, look at him doing situps on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame! Man, these guys must be sooooo much fun to be around, they probably so crazy stuff like that all the time!

In the video above the band clumsily tries to make you think they are a bunch of stupid rockers. For example, one of the guys talks about how much he loves their makeup artist. I guess that's supposed to be funny because it shows that he is a shallow buffoon who is way too into his image? I'm not sure if these guys have ever heard of a movie called "Spinal Tap" but they kind of did the whole "hilariously self-absorbed and clueless heavy metal band" thing a long time ago. It's about as subtle and original as how 99% of the jokes in "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry" are based around the premise of "gay people exist."

BBABH is essentially the IRL version of South Park's Faith +1

3. Christian or Canadian? Both, actually.
While it certainly explains a lot, it shouldn't come a surprise that BBABH are Canadian. But did I mention they are Christian? There's nothing wrong with that, the problem is that their parents (who have been happily married for 35 years) obviously didn't criticize them enough so they think everything they do is fucking gold. I love my parents; do you know why? Not because they were great fucking role models, that's for sure, but because they would never let me get away with subpar creative work. If I drew an apple for my mom at age 6, she would crumple it up and tell me the midtones were muddy. Here is how the conversation would go if I played "Mic Skillz II" for my dad (who saw The Accused with me in 1990 so he is down as fuck):

Me: So that's the new song I wrote for my band, what do you think?
Dad: I think you should start over.

Holy fucking fuck, I want to stab this fucking shitbag in the face with AIDS

These nerds probably met because they all went to the "edgy" maltstream church who used a grungy typewriter font for their logo and had some cryptic name that would occasionally trick stupid kids into thinking it was a club, like "The Pad" or "Crown of Thorns." One day they got crazy and stayed up until 11 PM, all hopped up on Red Vines and ginger ale and decided that the best way they could share Christ's love with the world was through a band that combined everything annoying about drama club and with the most boring parts of church. One of them got so excited that he said the f-word by accident, but he called his mom to apologize so it turned out OK.

The cockface from BBABH and the doughy singer for A Day To Remember compare their matching MXPX tattoos (seriously, I am not making that up, look closely). In nature that is a symbol which means "This infant should be eaten by its mother for the sake of its species."

4. They are saving themselves for marriage
I kind of feel bad for the half-dozen desperate girls who probably wait outside their tour bus every night hoping to give a blowjob to one of the guys in the band, because they're going to go home as lonely and sexually frustrated as they were when they arrived, thanks to BBABH's love for Christ. I bet these Boy Scouts trick girls into coming on the bus in hopes of getting laid, only instead of trying to get in their pants like the creepverts in every other band on the planet, BBABH probably give the girls a couple of Chick tracts, a glass of ice water, and send them on their way after scolding them for showing their ankles in public.

When you get this in your inbox, you are like "God I love being in a band"...

but then you get 100 of these and you think, "maybe they're still hiring for that assistant manager job at Claire's."

BBABH seems to attract more than their fair share of tryhard male groupies, which makes perfect sense given that the band themselves crave attention as though they were trapped on the floor of the ocean and peer approval was the oxygen to fill their burning lungs. I can't imagine what possessed this cockmaster to send them that picture. "Hmm," he thought, "I bet the dudes in BBABH would love to check their email and be greeted by a picture of my shirtless teen body with the name of their band written on it. Now, I better hurry up and use the flatiron before my mom needs to get ready for work because she hates sharing it with me."

This BBABH photo is just a few years old. You can see how far their shtick has come since then, when they were wearing flared jeans that they bought at Limited Too with gift certificates from their aunt.

This one time at band camp...
Let's be clear: I love bands with a shtick. Gwar, Rice, Shat, and Steel Panther are all brilliant. Obviously BBABH are smart enough to realize that by crafting such over-the-top personas, they'll attract attention, both positive and negative- and no press is bad press, right? I'm totally on board with that, which is half of why I love Brokencyde. Anybody who gets their panties in a bind over that is the butt of the joke and playing right into BBABH's hands. The problem is that their Ned Flanders-meets-Monty Python jokes aren't fucking funny. Go back to the drawing board, Bible-thumpers.

Blessed By A Broken Heart on MySpace