5 out of 5

Label: V2

Producer: John Goodmanson

Sometimes it’s the albums you’re most familiar with that are the hardest to review.  I love Young Machetes.  I love the violent, disgusting imagery, I love how visceral the blend of screamo vocals are, I love the sequencing, I love the production.  I can mention some roughs points of the album – 1, 2, 3, 4, Guitars being a tad more rough than enjoyable, and a leaning toward political imagery toward the end that slows things down – but I’m stretching, because I can listen to the record again and again.

I can’t recall my path to this for sure, but I believe after jumping on the Goodmanson bandwagon with HarveyDanger and then VAUX, I saw his name on the B.Brothers previous V2 outing and was blown away by this lil’ group who had come so far since the punkier Luckyhorse Industries singles collection and the chugga-chugga Rick Rubin produced ‘Piano Island’.  Fans who had been around since before I hobbled on to the scene were partially miffed by ‘Crimes’ (the album before this one) due to its poppier inclinations, and the band promised more of the good ol’ hardcore on Machetes.  But I don’t see so much of a divide between the two albums except that the tracks here just got sharper.  But it was a boiling point.  As was the case with Don Cab and American Don, the band got to the pinnacle of its particular style.  No one has since married the levels of intensity and musicality of the Brothers on this album – punk, pop, screamo, metal, and yet behind all the fucken’ bluster listen to that music – it’s not really as heavy as it seems to virgin ears.  The tones are clean, the melodies are there, they’re just shrieked and blasted at optimal levels.

It’s hard for me to figure out Goodmanson’s exact style.  It’s apparent that he excels at high volumes of chaos – Harvey Danger’s first album was a pretty ho-hum pop rock affair, but once they tossed in the multi-instrument insanity for King James, Goodmanson knocked it out of the park.  And while BB’s surely grew as a group, Rick Rubin’s low-end treatment would never have allowed for the album Young Machetes would come to be, so it was just perfect timing, perfect marriage of the crew playing the instruments and the dude behind the dials.

What else?  Amazing artwork that perfectly summarizes the album’s feelings, an amazing lurching from raspy to poppy, to snarky to disgusting… and while the album does end on a couple of slower tracks, finale ‘Black Swan’ takes its time to earn its final explosion.  This album: one of the best things ever.