Shit sandwich.
For those who have seen the movie Spinal Tap, you know this scene. The band is talking about their album reviews and for their release "Shark Sandwich" the reviewer just simply wrote "Shit sandwich."
Well, calling Brokencyde's 2009 CD "I'm Not A Fan But The Kids Like It!" simply a shit sandwich would be too much of a compliment. In fact, that would pretty much be praise for this screamo/hip hop/ electro group who dub their sound as "crunkcore". I have done many unpleasant things in my life. I've gotten into car accidents, had various illnesses, been kicked in the groin repeatedly by my brother, sat through the god-awful Dragon Ball Evolution movie, and done many other nasty things but they all pale in comparison to just how vomit inducing this album is.
In fact, I would rather do all of those things every day for a month than listen to this album ever again. Yes, it's THAT bad.
I "tried" to listen to this album with an open mind. I didn't buy it (I have better CD's to spend my money on) but I did give it a download and here is what I thought.
The song opens with a lame intro of an air raid siren going off and what sounds like laser guns firing off in the background. Ok, cool I guess. Then an explosion and the song "Freaxx" starts. Instantly once the faux hip hop club beat started, I felt nauseous and it was only a few seconds into the song. Not looking good already for this album. Then the vocals kick in. My god, what the fuck did I just get myself into? Auto tuned clean vocals with some douchebag doing horrid screamo backing vocals? But wait, it gets worse! This guy is singing about the "shorties" , getting "fucking freaky" and getting girls' panties off while that guy keeps doing that annoying screaming in the background. The screaming vocals and the lame, recycled dance club beat are about as appealing as getting circumsized by a lightsaber, with Jar Jar Binks commencing the circumcision. To my dismay, it looks like the rest of this album is only going to get worse....
The next song, "Skeet Skeet" comes up next. The same shit again, annoying screams mixed with the auto tune vocalist. But wait, they added something new! Shallow minded rapping! Yes, the guys rap about what they know best, getting drunk and having sex. I guess life is only about two things to Brokencyde: fucking and getting drunk.
That's also what this whole album is about. Seriously. I like sex and I like drinking as much as the next guy, but I don't like hearing about how great they are for the 62 minutes and 48 seconds of the album. Is that all you guys can sing/scream/rap about? Nothing else?
Next we get a skit. Ok this might be funny. I used to listen to some hip hop and occasionally they'd have little skits or interludes between songs. Hell, if Ludacris can do it, maybe Brokencyde can put a funny skit in here. Well, should I be surprised that they fucked that up too? What we get is a badly acted "phone call" of what I assume to be one of the band members calling some random Mexican guy and asking him if he wants to suck his "daddy dick". I'm totally serious right now. Then the guy calling realizes his error and calls a girl and asks her the same question to which she merrily accepts. Well...that was pointless and unfunny. I mean, it was a nice break from the music, I'll give it that, but still, it failed to provide laughs which is the point of skits! It was just stupid and not needed. Plain and simple.
The song "Booty Call" comes up next. Ugh, more lyrics about fucking set to the usual scream-sing about sex/drinking/dumb shit-formula. Fortunately, rapper E-40 is on this track, but he fails to save the song from being just....shit. Then again, I don't think Jesus Christ, God and Chuck Norris being guests on this song could save this album from having bad songs. The singer also tells the listener to get "nasty". Hm...
"Get Crunk" follows next. I don't know how one gets "crunk" but I assume Brokencyde will explain to me how to achieve this task. Well, all they tell the listener to do is "Get Crunk! Get Crunk! Act a fool up in the club gonna you goin get fucked up! Throw your fist up!" and to "Get loose get laid fuckin bitches' everyday bc13 and you know where here to stay." We are also told to not only get "crunk" but to get drunk and to get "buck", whatever that means. Did I mention the combination of the screaming and the lame, recycled Lil Jon beat is basically the audio equivilant of AIDS? Seriously, how can people enjoy this? A little interlude follows in this song that states "All you motha fuckin brizzles to get off the flizzle and to start fuckin dizzles fishizzle my nizzle got these fuckin brizzles all up in my mizzle like a fuckin grizzle". I have no clue what he said either. At this point, I began to seriously consider getting tested for AIDS the next time I visited the doctor.
After this song, we get the song "Yellow Bus". They should have called it "Short Bus" instead, a tribute to the vehicle that provides transport to Brokencyde fans, and probably also serves as the band's tour bus. One of the rappers claims to have fucked "Alisha, Theresa, Alyssa, Marissa, your teacher, your grandma, your auntie, your girlfriend, and probably your sister." Ok, an "I fucked your mom joke". I thought we outgrew those in junior high. Really guys?
The next few songs are when the tired formula of dumb sex songs really starts to take its course. It's no longer so bad it's almost humorous, it's actually boring at this point. "Get Up", "Poppin" and "40 Oz " just follow the same "sex/drinking/partying" song formula. "Jealously" seems to be directed towards "haters" of the band. So in other words, the general populace who has an IQ over 75. The beats are so bad for all of these songs, they're starting to give me the beginning stages of cancer I think. I'll have to get tested for that too when I visit the doctor. One song stands out due to its sheer stupidity and that song is "Sex Toyz" which proclaims,
"Damn right ho your so sleezy
You give me the heebie jeebies!
You make my pee-pee hard!"
That is the real chorus. Not even kidding. Now I know I read somewhere that the band claims to make songs just for fun, but this is outright retarded. No wait, calling it retarded would be too kind. This is the same kind of music you would get if you gave a lobotomized retard pen and paper and told him to write a song after playing a mainstream rap song for him.
"Schitzo" tries to make an attempt at what I think is differing from the sex/party atmosphere of the previous songs but fails just as miserably as the rest of the songs.
We then are treated to "Scene Girls", an ode to a large chunk of Brokencyde's fanbase. Basically, another dumb sex song. Things were just getting unbearable, and I was close to digging out the shotgun from the local gun store to become an hero like Kurt Cobain until...
I finally made it to the last song! If I ever met John McCain, he could tell me of his expieriences as a POW and I could tell him I listened to a whole Brokencyde album. I think the poor man would start to weep for me, for I went through a much more horrible torture than he did in the Hanoi Hilton.
The album closes with the song "I'm Sorry". To my misfortune, this is the longest track on the album, tracking in at almost 8 minutes long. I think this was supposed to be the "sad" song to close the album but it aroused no emotion from me. Well, other than hatred for the band. It's just boring. More screaming and weak rapping, all for almost eight minutes. Eight minutes of my life that I'll never get back. At the end we get audio clips of people saying how bad Brokencyde is. How appropriate. The last audio clip states the truth, saying, "Crunk and screamo? What the fuck are people thinking?!" At least the band acknowledges how terrible they are.
This was literally 17 tracks of pure Hell. In fact, it would not surprise me if Satan himself plays this CD to torture the poor souls in Hell. This album shows everything that is wrong with popular music; auto-tune, shallow/stupid/repetitive lyrics, and worst of all, the "scene kid" sub-culture. You know what's worse? Brokencyde isn't the only "crunkcore" group out there. Yes, there are more bands that have a similar style of music such as Breath Carolina, I Set My Friends On Fire, Dot Dot Curve and sadly more. Perhaps Brokencyde are only making this horrible excuse of music to see just how far they can push the boundaries of bad music, like the infamous grindcore group Anal Cunt. However, where Anal Cunt is actually humorous in their songs, Brokencyde is just...retarded for lack of a better word. Brokencyde are so terrible, that their level of pure shitty-ness is in a class of its own. In fact, I think their name should be used as an adjective to describe how bad something can be. It can be either bad, terrible, atrocious or Brokencyde. That sounds good to me, because this was the worst piece of "music" I've ever heard in my life. The fact that people actually like it sickens me too.
Brokencyde's lack of talent has been noticed by the music community too. The band has been being slammed by basically every prominent music magazine. The band Senses Fail slammed Brokencyde too, when both bands were on the same tour! Senses Fail frontman Buddy Neilsen would go out of his way to tell the crowd how bad Brokencyde is after the group would finish playing.
He said of the band:
"Yeah, I slam [Brokencyde] every night because in no way, shape or form do I back anything they do or say and I am embarrassed that kids these days are into it and am sad that kids these days are exposed to it. There is absolutely no substance whatsoever in their songs and no passion in anything they do. It is the musical equivalent of a snow cone, bland tasting frozen tap water loaded with sugar, yet colorful, that will give you a brain freeze, melt all over your hands leaving yourself dissatisfied and sticky."
Truer words were never spoken. The rest of Buddy's comments can be found here
In short, this was one of the worst albums I've ever heard (if not THE worst album ever). It's stupid, shallow, immature, repetitive, and I could just think of a million more negative adjectives to describe this. I think it gave me AIDS, cancer, diabeetus and probably other diseases I'm not aware of. Listening to this album was a most horrible experience. Don't download this, don't buy it or please DO NOT listen to it. Avoid it like it's the plague.
-Joe
