For its horrific depiction of war, The Blood Brothers’ 2006 swan song Young Machetes recalls Full Metal Jacketand not the first 30 minutes of the film, where R. Lee Ermey barks quotables at his recruits, but rather the film’s violent, psychologically scarring denouement. Like a good war film, Young Machetes drops you right in the center of battle, where machine guns blare and the sky lights up with explosions as wounded soldiers scream bloody murder, their flesh torn to a pulp.
Sound exciting? If so, that’s the problem. Unlike the countless punk bands that recorded platitude-ridden anti-war albums in response to Operation Enduring Freedom, The Blood Brothers honed a smarter, more focused critique targeting the media for glorifying this kind of violence, or even for sexualizing it. “Young machetes in lingerie charm us all into a frenzy,” The Blood Brothers sing, denouncing the misleading images that helped sell the country on the war. Coloring their blistering screamo with unlikely flourishes of cabaret and jazz, on Young Machetes, The Bloody Brothers strip war of all its romantic allure, dwelling instead on its casualties and grotesqueries.
“Dress my corpse up in a low cut dress/ Drizzle lipstick on my charred French kiss/ Dip my severed jaw in cheap cologne/ Push-up bras dangling from snapped elbows,” they sing. “Death’s just death, no matter how you dress it up.”
