Talk Shit Get Kissed, by Brojob

Yeah, I know. That band that talks about succ’ing you off from the back. The band that screamed for the sound of a thousand clapping asses. That gay ass deathcore band that’s out to steal your boyfriend. Just a joke, right? Let’s get into that.

In a minute.

First off, the music. Brojob pens some competent and fairly abusive deathcore. Sure, we all know when the breakdowns are coming. We know that the vocals will sound like that time I got too drunk on Maker’s and threw up an entire spaghetti dinner. The rhythm section pounds, punches and crunches like a motherfucker. The lead guitars and keys add some nice textures. There are some periodic trapt touches that will get the kids into trapcore super excited and add some nice bounce to it, reminding me of mid-nineties NYHC. The drum programming is decent, but does come across a little too mechanical at times. Fans of the genre will likely dig it but it isn’t likely to make new converts.

That’s kinda the point, though.

Brojob made no bones about their intent to shred the toxic masculinity that overruns metal as a whole and deathcore to a disturbing degree. I think that’s why opener and eponymous track “Talk Shit, Get Kissed” resonated so much with some of us from the get go. It isn’t just funny, it finally pokes some fun at the musclebound daterapists in Affliction T’s, crowdkilling and generally assholing up the joint at every fucking shows. It gives them the mosh lines and the pit-heavy breakdowns they crave while convincing them to bark along with surprisingly catchy lines about doing the kind of things they’d beat up those stupid queers for doing in any other circumstance.

This is where I have always held some concern about the band. There is that voice that asks if they just sing about sucking cock because it’s so damn funny to act like one o’ them there homos. It’s a valid and necessary question. The infantile expression of sexuality, shown so clearly in their “succ you from the back” call to arms and requests to “tuck your balls back and squeeze them with your ass” doesn’t help it. Not to mention the whole thing about eating Booty O’s with extra ass. Perhaps they are just another group of shitty alt-right douches using a malformed idea of irony to mask the same old hate.

“Save Yourself,” one of the few serious songs on the album, makes it clear, though, in what works for me as an anthem for the band. An ode to sincerity and honest joy and a huge FUCK YOU (pessimist) to the disingenuous ironic detachment that was such a hallmark of my own grunge-laden youth, it makes it clear that they lack any patience for that bullshit. They are about an open, glorious, cheesy joy that takes no prisoners and tolerates no guff.

With that in mind, I don’t think they could have accomplished what they have if they had not taken on the accepted and expected trapping of their chosen genre. If they had aimed for more musically, if they had stuck with more intricate song structures and involved lyricism, if they had pushed more boundaries or pushed these further, I think it would have been too much. They wouldn’t have caught the eye of so many scenesters with that first catchy track or held them with what is an undoubted classic of the style in “We are the Boyfriend Stealers.” They walk a razor thin line of satire and honest love for the music they clearly adore while fighting the aspects of it they clearly despise.

Perhaps it is because of that that the more serious songs are the more interesting ones, sonically speaking as well as lyrically so. Since there is the comfort that listeners can always switch back to “Teenie Weenie” or “Tickle War,” they seemed to be a bit more willing to stretch their creativity and violate genre norms with clean vocals and the occasional melody. “Hate is a Disease” has already gained some traction as be-whatever-you-gotta-be screed against depression, but “Let Go,” an ode to love and loss, is the one that hit me hardest.

On the down side, the mix is distractingly uneven. Too often, the drums and vocals overpower the rest of the instruments, especially the lead guitars. Also, much of the music is a tad too similar, making it hard to differentiate songs. Likely, that is aggravated by the first point. And “Goth is the New Black” is the same damn tired ass list of jokes about Goths that I’ve been hearing since ’95, which I am pretty sure makes them older than both Andy and Jacob. Otherwise, it’s a pretty kickass record. Certainly my favorite of the year so far.

buy it from hallowed records all direct-like.