And speaking of old fans, they'll be blown away by the shockingly diverse "Spit Shine your Black Clouds." To be blunt, I f***ing love this. Imagine if the Blood Brothers went back in time and killed pop music, only to replace it with their own take on true rock 'n roll rebellion. It is at times beautiful, at times sadistic, and almost always brutally dark. It is also a little less intense than other tracks, and will probably be an excellent introduction to the band's style of perverting pretty much anything that society has deemed to be safe for our robotic, unthinking consumption.

"1, 2, 3, 4 Guitars" continues this thread of musical experimentation. The Blood Brothers attack with a chilled-out lounge jazz number murdered by a dose of bad ecstasy laced with even worse LSD. Just when you think they've finally lost their energy, things explode into a series of violent spurts. "Lift the Veil, Kiss the Tank" next takes the stage, and is a rock ballad done Blood Brothers style. There are plenty of sing-alongs, misanthropy, color-coded guitar hooks, and grinding bass lines. "Nausea Shreds Yr Head" is surf rock in a sea of acid, pretty much your classic headf*** to a tee. "Rat Rider" has some pretty rad opening percussion and tons of swarming energy beneath the surface; when things final boil over into the writhing dance-rock from Hell that it really is, try not to boogie when you're burning down society. I'd call this the feelgood hit of the Apocalypse.

"Johnny Ripper" doesn't offer any rest, its buzzing hypertension built on moments of serene clarity amidst jumbled mathematics done in a coked-out haze. "Huge Gold AK-47" is catchier than the Bubonic Plague, and just as infectious. This rapidfire hook doozy wastes hook ammo on your corpse like it is out to desecrate, and I bet this one will be stuck in your skull for days.

"Street Wars/Exotic Foxholes" sees Young Machetes wind down to a marvelous close with this and follow-up "Giant Swan." The former is spawned from patient funk bass and soon expands into a noisy, rattling sing-along. It is probably the most focused I've ever heard this particularly anarchic band get, and trust me, it works extremely well. A simple yet moving clean guitar passage is slowly chained to a swelling orchestral number, the likes of which announces closing track "Giant Swan." "Giant Swan" is a largely acoustic number with some tribal percussion and a slow build into one last batch of fireworks. The song is in essence exactly what I hoped Burn Piano Island, Burn's "The Shame" could have been, yet infinitely better; the band have realy upped everything about their output yet again.

With each and every year, I watch as people around me are sucked into an ever increasing number of childish, obnoxious, and overall safe bands who parade some vague notion of rebellion and punk. The fact these bands actually profit from the hardwork and actual social destruction caused by real punk bands during the genre's early days shows just how little in our world needs to be challenged these days to appear "against the system" so-to-speak. Perhaps this sense of overall contented safety is what makes this band so increasingly amazing; our world is not f***ing alright and they know it. If you want to hear what is outside the sphere of modern conformity, see if you can track this down. If the Blood Brothers keep up this level of work, it won't be that hard to find...this is a definite album of the year contender. Five stars!