THE BLOOD BROTHERS LAUNCH THEIR MAJOR LABEL ASSAULT WITH "Burn Piano Island, Burn"
"It's not the sound that matters, it's the integrity that you keep within the music."
-- Producer Ross Robinson

Los Angeles, CA - October 1, 2002 -- Even by the most extreme standards of punk rock, the upcoming ARTISTdirect debut by THE BLOOD BROTHERS will shock and amaze.

With sessions wrapped up last spring, Burn Piano Island, Burn captures the Seattle-based band in all its gory splendor, with tracks like "Guitarmy," whose compressed violence in just 37 seconds smashes the measures of energy applied to virtually everything else ever recorded.

But by also featuring acoustic guitar strums, vintage electric pianos, and even a xylophone, The Blood Brothers challenge the preconceptions of their underground fan base, for whom "selling out" as a band would be as welcome as a Taliban fund-raiser at the Rotary Club.

According to Burn Piano Island, Burn producer Ross Robinson (Korn, Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, At The Drive In), this willingness of The Blood Brothers to question everyone's expectations -- even their own -- is more what punk rock is about than meltdown tempos and spiky hair.

"It was scary to step out of the extreme punk-rock state of being," says Robinson. "We did talk about how some of their hard-core fans wouldn't like some of what we were doing on these sessions. But in the end they'd go 'I don't care' because we were having a lot of fun, doing things we'd never done before."

Since putting The Blood Brothers together in 1997, singers Jordan Blilie and Johnny Whitney, guitarist Cody Votolato, bassist Morgan Henderson, and drummer Mark Gajadhar have enjoyed impeccable alt credibility. Their first two albums, both independent releases, pushed even jaded observers to adjectival excess: Metal Hammer described their second CD, March On Electric Children, as "perhaps the most instantaneously startling and immediately engrossing rock records you'll hear all year," while CMJ New Music Report mused, "What kind of drugs are these fucking kids on?"

One writer, however, posed a less rhetorical question: "The Blood Brothers' next album will be on a major label," noted Jim Toweill of The Argonaut, "so will they be able to continue this streak of genius?"

Hell, yeah, insists Robinson. "For one thing, with ARTISTdirect Records we could spend more than one week putting the album together, which is about how much time they did March On. I think they just did the previous one without thinking, but Piano Island gets deeper inside who they are."

Roughly twice as long as March On, Burn Piano Island, Burn runs on the manic energy of the band's punk roots, with hair-raising twin lead vocals from Blilie and Whitney adding an infusion of extra octane. This unique flavor builds both endurance and dimension into their performances, while also pushing each frontman to catharses that seem beyond human capacity.

"It was kind of rough, actually," Robinson says. "One day Jordan would be like, 'Oh, man, I'm not doing as well as Johnny,' or Johnny would say, 'His voice is better than mine right now.' But every single day, during the month and two weeks that we were recording, I'd put them in there, sometimes at different times, sometimes at the same time. And by playing off each other and working together, they both rose to the occasion."

But there's more to Burn Piano Island, Burn than shredded throats and primal intensity. On tracks like "The Salesman, Denver Max," whose collision of folkie guitar and tribal vocals suggests an execution hootenanny in Lord of the Flies, or "Every Breath is a Bomb," with avant-garde sound collages that recall John Cage, The Blood Brothers identify and attack the rules that have come to define punk as rigidly as those of any other genre.

For Robinson, these experiments recapture the anarchy of the original punk explosion of 25 years ago. "It's not the sound that matters," he explains. "It's the integrity that you keep within the music. A lot of bands today claim punk rock, but they really have nothing to do with it. The difference is that if you asked the guys in Blood Brothers to do something with their music or their lives that they don't want to do, they'll actually get physically ill. They're young, so they know they've got nothing to lose. To me, that's punk rock, right there. It's a way of life and a state of being, more than a style of music.

"It's what integrity sounds like."

Based on a theme that Robinson describes as "lyrically and musically, to do the very, very, very best that you can do," Burn Piano Island, Burn will be unleashed by ARTISTdirect Records in late February 2003.

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* * * * * * Heidi Ellen Robinson
Senior Vice President, Media Relations and Publicity
ARTISTdirect
5670 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 200
Los Angeles, CA 90036
323-634-4112 (phone)
323-634-4299 (fax)
heidi.robinson@artistdirect.com