Epitaph Records has re-issued The Blood Brothers’ classic albums Burn, Piano Island, Burn, Crimes, Young Machetes and March On Electric Children. The CD and digital re-issues include rare previously unavailable live tracks and videos, music videos and B-sides for the ultimate collectors’ edition.
From 1997 to 2007, The Blood Brothers’ “molotov mixture of suburb surrealism and sonic extremity” (Alternative Press, 2003) rocked and riveted critics and fans around the world. Formed in the suburbs of Seattle, the dueling singers Johnny Whitney and Jordan Blilie along with Cody Votolato (guitar), Morgan Henderson (bass) and Mark Gajadhar (drums) crafted a unique style of convulsive, ground breaking hardcore that was quickly embraced by critics and fans of punk, hardcore and indie rock.
Over their ten years in existence the quintet released five critically acclaimed studio albums (four of which Epitaph has re-issued), including Burn, Piano Island, Burn, “the most prolific, beautiful, and vital statement of rock since the Stooges’ Raw Power” (PopMatters, 2003), Crimes, the sturdiest bridge between the hardcore underground and indie-rock elitists” (Alternative Press, 2004) and “one of the best of 2006” (PopMatters, 2006), Young Machetes.
Having moved on to other projects, Whitney and Votolato with indie-rockers Jaguar Love and Blilie, Gajadhar and Henderson with post-punk outfit Past Lives, The Blood Brothers called it quits at their creative peak, leaving behind a catalog the helped define a genre and continues to influence bands around the world.
Late December 2020 found Soul Glo holed away in an unfinished warehouse, beginning to find drum tones for their upcoming full length, Diaspora Problems. They had just begun to accept that they would be in talks with Epitaph Records, and that it was likely they were going to go with the label as they hadn’t even begun to reach a place where they could consider shopping it to other record labels. Working with Epitaph was far and away the best case scenario that the band could’ve hoped for, but they simultaneously wondered if the label had any understanding of what they were getting into.
From 2016 to 2021, Soul Glo conceptualized and produced Diaspora Problems nearly completely alone. The demo and tracking process was handled exclusively by the band’s bassist GG and engineer/close friend Evan Bernard. The final tracks were recorded in that same unfinished warehouse and the band’s practice space during the hottest parts of summer 2021.
