This is the Most Fascinatingly Awful Band I’ve Heard in Eons

Look, I do my very best not to give anyone crap for liking a particular musical artist. Lord knows my own taste is highly suspicious: although I’m primarily a fan of punk, hard rock and metal, it’s no secret that my gym playlist is frequently home to the tackiest pop groups in history. You may laugh, but listening to music that makes you want to run away by instinct… it’s actually not such a bad idea on the treadmill.

That said: recently a band named brokenCYDE came to my attention, and it’s the most engrossingly bad music I’ve come across in some time. Touted as a leading representative of the emerging screamo-crunk genre (which you know is as bad as it sounds) I’ve become so obsessed with their heinousness that I’m completely hypnotised. Cannot tear my eyes away from their stomach-churningly self-aware, humourless, misogynist videos in utter disbelief.

Buzzfeed describes them as what happens “if Insane Clown Posse became a boy band”. In theory, the music’s a crossover between screamo and the tepid kind of drowning-in-Autotune hip-hop-lite infiltrating the Top 40. My take is that it’s a soundtrack to the death knell of irony with built-in screaming-in-horror reactions. Take a look, if you dare, and pay special attention to the impenetrably enigmatic lyrics.

Now, don’t worry: your initial reaction is that this is an incredibly clever parody of everything that’s wrong with this kind of music. That’s what I thought too. Then my next reaction was that this was so bad, it’s surely the product of a marketing team constructed entirely of 50 year olds and up, blindly flailing around as to what “the kids” are into.

That’s when your stomach drops and you realise these little shits are deadly serious. All that misogynistic ranting and screaming (which, by screamo standards, doesn’t even approach anything good) -- they only seem to sing about girls being whores or getting drunk and stoned. The scene in that video where a girl is grabbed by the neck, screamed at, and all she does to react is coquettishly purse her lips as if it’s merely just a saucy bit of foreplay -- it’s unbearable! Even their album title is excruciatingly self-aware: “I’m Not a Fan, But the Kids Like It!”

I’m turning 30 shortly and this band has really landed a signpost in my life -- the moment when top 40 music for “the kids” ceased to be just irritating, and instead became immensely perplexing. One of the band members’ roles is to turn their fucking smoke machine on. This is not a joke -- hell, even the Prodigy’s dancing man seems credible now. The devoted prepubescent fans of the band defend them wildly across the web, claiming that nobody seems to understand the band are all in on one big joke, but it’s one terrible joke indeed.

But here’s the thing: I can’t stop listening to them. It’s the musical equivalent of letting off a reeking fart and not being able to stop yourself from smelling just how bad the product of your own body is. An absolutely fascinating snapshot of where youth culture is at this moment in time.

In anticipation of any comments defending the band, I totally acknowledge musical taste is subjective; it’s just that these guys have just particularly floored me. My only response is to go check out some bands like Enter Shikari who can actually pull off this kind of thing in a more talented, meaningful way -- you may just like them.

But for now, I’ll leave you with more brokenCYDE. If you find the music or video below even slightly distinguishable from the other one above, you’re doing better than I am.

Tagged as: Music and gigs