I really don't know shit about Kerli, except that she's Estonian, kind of scene looking in some photos, and kind of annoying musically. Clearly she's a pop industry puppet using the Alice in Wonderland movie to breakout in America, but she comes off as a cutrate Pink or Gaga. I guess the real appeal here is that dudes would want to eff (would), a strategy which I'm not sure sells records. The song is unbelievably bad and kind of detracting from my desire to eff, see below for aural evidence. Not sure what else to say except that Kerli sounds like a good name for a clown or a pet pubic hair.
I'm not sure why it's more appealing to me than Kerli, but I'm kind of digging this Romance on A Rocketship fgt. Dude's rollin solo, but he's from Missouri and probably couldn't find anyone ghey enough to play in his band. I am inadvertently going to see him play in May with the homies Fight Fair and the bros City Lights.
Is that a fucking beauty mark? Naturally, all the merch is hella paedo, note the black tee featuring a red truck with a 4 year old girl driving it- I really hope to see some creeper just hanging outside Build-A-Bear at Easton Town Center wearing that.
C'mon browe, you're getting pussy? Looking like this? How things have changed...
I'm feeling this song though, mad chilled out for the upcoming summer.
Swimming right along in the sea of bullshit, we have the female version of Never Shout Never, Cady Groves. She is also from one of those indiscernable states in the breadbasket full of picked on kids, Oklahoma this time around. Meg White's younger sister with steroid injected hair?
I think the best thing Cady could do for her career is punch Miley Cyrus backstage at a festival to gain notoriety (ala that chick from Bikini Kill vs. Courtney Love). To be honest the video bored me, but kids across the country that say things like "Skiddamarinky-doo. I love you :]" will probably eat this up in the coming months.
In the realm of easycore I'm seeing alot of really unimpressive Four Year Strong knockoffs, but the pick of the litter is Chunk, No Captain Chunk! Yes the name is horrible, even if it is a goonies reference, but I'm lifting my international easycore ban for these Frenchman. I'm not a huge fan of foreign accents in easycore, but the snippet of synth infused, double bass/double-time vocal filled pop-punk below has me salivating for the album, which is currently in the mixing stages.
Lastly but surely not least, is Sleeping With Sirens, on Rise Records whose album I took a listen to and enjoy quite a bit. The least painful way is to check em out is the video for the album track below....a pretty standard v-neck and scene hair affair.
But if you are a sucker for pain, then try and sit through an acoustic version full of awkward faces and studio-lacking missed notes.
My apologies for not going super in-depth with any of these finds, but I hope you found something new you like, or hate for that matter.
The whole emo/scene crowd has thus far evaded any kind of mega tragedy beyond the odd dead brit tween, untill now! Finally we have some kind of fucked up happening to make the world fear and respect us, like Burzum did for black metal!
This is kind of old news I guess in internet time (as in it occured last month), but most of you oldz will no doubt have let it pass you by.
The lowdown is this; Picture of decapitated dog's head surfaces on the internets, on the 4chan animal board of all places, thus spuring a huge fucking detective game to track down those responsible. Within only a few days, and an impressive effort on 4chan's behalf, involving phone calls to suspects, myspace stalking, and even one dude (under the pseudonym "Niggertroll") traveling to all the suspects houses to personally question them and report back, a fucked up circle of emo (scene 1.0) kids with a twighlight obsession was uncovered, and this "Wolfie" chick deduced to be the one who actually killed the dog, with everyone else in the circle eventually blaming her.
Whether or not she actually killed the dog or not is still under debate. The dog turned out to be an ex stray called Rigsby that was adopted by some family, before going missing, next to be seen on the internet, sans body. Wolfie claimed the dog was roadkill she decapitated as part of her taxidermy interest.
Erm...not sure if want
Anyways, the ED article has pretty much everything that ever happened involving the messy event, including complete dox on all involved (as well as a frankly disturbing pic of Wolfie giving some dude head). It essentially involves a circle of emo tweens, some kind of Dawson's Creek esque relationship drama, and some aleged animal cruelty to top it off. It pretty much reads like an episode of CSI. Whevs.
If you dont have the time, peep this much more consise news article here.
:(
What do you think? Is animal cruelty scene? or more of an emo thing? Will patron saint of PETA Oli Sykes be getting involved?
P.S If you want cheering up after that downer, click here.
I interviewed the popular deathcore band Born of Osiris a few weeks ago for Substream. It was only a short profile, so there wasn't room to include everything we talked about. For example, their thoughts on The Rapist, the future of their rap careers, and Johnny Plague's puffy vests! Here's what was left on the cutting room floor:
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I wonder if any of these fatts split their pants during this performance?
What do you think of The Rapist's cover of your song "Bow Down"? And how is Cameron's rap career going?? Thats WILD. First of all the kid in the top picture is hilarious, did a great job with the lipstick. The video is just as funny, I couldn't help but wonder what was going through the teachers heads when those kids came out and started headbanging in the middle of the gym. Its cool to see kids play the music though, great job! As far as Cameron and even all the rest of our rap careers who knows, maybe you'll find something or hear something eventually ; )
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Cam drops science with defiance, and his cornrows are FIRE, son. He kinda reminds me of a younger Blizzard Man??
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"Don't mess with us or you'll totally get shot with a gun!"
This is funny to me I always give him shit about that. We shared a bus with them and almost every day I would ask why he didnt wear it on stage. I even put it on and pretended to be him at a show once. John, WEAR THAT THING!
Growing up on the mean streets of upstate New York, I encountered my fair share of violence. When I was nine, scandal rocked my town when some gay French dude* (pardon the redundancy) hunted down 8 local pros and strangled them to death, storing their bodies in his split level for months before the cops caught on. Since then I’ve been fascinated by society’s underbelly and find the fucked up things that happen in this world a source of constant entertainment.
Right about now you’re probably wondering where I’m going with all this, so without further ado, let me introduce you to Cuttin’ Up Hookers, an up and coming clothing company I’m currently obsessed with. If the name doesn’t make you LOL, try putting a strong southern accent on it and saying it again.. Trust me, it’ll get ya.
If I ever got invited to live in the Sticky House I’d def rock this every chance I got.
Apart from the A++ name, CUH has been cranking out some pretty sweet designs for a few seasons now – all scene-approved of course. While their selection isn’t all that expansive atm, the designs they do have are almost all winners. Printed exclusively on American Apparel, you know these styles could pop up on any skinny-jean-wearing, hair-straightening, deep-vneck-rocking posi-band around.
Dudes take note: just about all girls love tats, and this one in particular has a thing for inked collarbones. If you’re too commitment-phobic (or are just a wimp) why not try a shirt with a collarbone graphic so you can still be edgy (just not permanently so)? Unless you’re a fan of the euro-trash look, I’d say go for this CUH v-neck. Sort of like a pair of A&F jeans, this shirt knows how to accentuate one of my favorite places.
My personal fave for the chicks would have to be these mesh shorts. I love Gotcha splayed across the back, but I don’t quite understand the hand on the front. Am I missing the joke? I hope there is one, because then I’d wear them just so I could be that girl who thinks she’s just wearing a cute pair of shorts while all the boys really know what’s up and laugh/get boners at the joke behind her back.
Of course no scene clothing line would be complete without a package of duds emblazoned with references for the oldz – like, I wasn’t even conceived when Back to The Future came out. However, I’m glad CUH didn’t forget about white ppl’s favorite non-threatening black guy, Will Smith. The intro to Fresh Prince was the first rap I ever memorized b.
Who doesn’t love a good pop culture allusion? Even though the Simpsons sort of burned out by the time I was allowed to watch it, I still LOLed@ the Duff reference on these shirts. Not to mention the dude on the left = WOULD. Hit me up when you have a date with a hair straightener bb <3
With the backing of popular bands like ATL, MCMB, AD2R, TWTA and Cobra Starship, there’s no doubt Cuttin’ Up Hookers is a clothing company to watch out for. And after you snag some new duds, don’t forget to thank me for all the tail you get at the next Breathe Carolina show.
So what do y'all think of Cuttin' Up Hookers? Is it weird that this brand is all about pop culture references from a decade before their customers were born?? Do u think it is run by a bunch of oldz who want to eff/make money off of young scene kids? Is that wrong??
*CORECTION: My mom just told me he was actually a 6’4” dude from the east coast – just with a gay French name... same diff!
When I'm not pissing away my precious free time writing about self-centered scene girls and Juggalo country-rap, I enjoy designing shirts for bands you hate and writing for magazines you don't read. Here's a few things I've done recently in both categories.
I'm pretty sure I'm the only person on earth who both loves FTSK and can do legit 90s-style West Coast graffiti letters.
Here's something I wrote about Municipal Waste in Terrorizer, a fine metal magazine from the UK. I don't actually hate them-- they seem like really nice dudes-- but that wouldn't be very entertaining, would it? I do hate their silly image, though, so I wasn't making that part up.
"I want Municipal Waste to die in a fire. You might think it's because the singer banged my ex-girlfriend a decade ago, but it's not that at all." Click here to read more
If you don't like this band, song, and video, we are not friends. It's as simple as that.
Winds of Plague are another one of my favorite bands, and I reviewed their album for Decibel a while ago. I would have given it a higher score except then the morons who read that magazine would think I was shilling for WoP. I sort of was, but they are honestly a really fucking good band so they deserve some shilling.
"Metalcore is among the tiredest of genres, with most bands unabashedly sodomizing the corpse of At The Gates, administering fellatio to In Flames' flaccid member, and giving painful high school-style handjobs to the milktoast riffs of Heartwork-era Carcass..."
I haven't been straightedge in a decade, but I did do a shirt for this sxe band called Envision from Canada. They are good and you should check them out. The idea was to use a classic straightedge-style layout, but update it with a cool colorway that would look right at home at Forever 21 or Zumiez.
Substream is a really good newish magazine that covers pretty much all the current bands I like, and I am super stoked that I'll be writing for them starting next issue. My first couple stories will be about Fight Fair and Show Me The Skyline, two of my favorite bands. See, I'm not fucking joking, I really do love this stuff!
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.
I am old and I grew up listening to hardcore and metal. Here is what my friends at Something Awful said about this blog. I like it:
The meaning of "Stuff You Will Hate" changes depending on the installment, and often during the course of a single column. It can mean "stuff I love, but that you, the reader, will dislike." Sometimes it means "stuff you will hate, and I hate it as well." And sometimes, it means "stuff you like, and I might actually like it, too, but I'm going to pretend to hate it in a way that will infuriate you because it will be written as a parody of a typical idiot hating something great, and you'll quote the fake blurb to your friends and say 'what an ignorant dick' when in reality it's intentional and now we're laughing at you, you gullible fuck."