The Brian Jonestown Massacre – My Bloody Underground

The Brian Jonestown Massacre – My Bloody Underground / 2008 A Records / 14 Tracks / http://www.brianjonestownmassacre.com /

Before receiving “My Bloody Underground”, I had heard a lot about The Brian Jonestown Massacre but I had not had the chance to familiarize myself with their sound. The act has been around since the early 1990s, and their first album, Methodrone, set the band onto a run that (as of this moment) ends with their thirteenth studio album, “My Bloody Underground”. To get into some sense of where the band has been in the past, I attempted to get into the band’s unique groove.

Learning about the act, I can say that “My Bloody Underground” is a little more “out there” than other BJM releases. This could be due to the fact that Mark Gardner, of Ride, had a hand in writing “Monkey Powder”. “Monkey Powder” is a focal track of the latter half of the album, continuing the run of longer tracks that began with “Auto-Matic-Faggot For The People” and ends when the album ends, during “Black-Hole-Symphony”. The act gives their fan the most possible bang for their buck without having to move to a 2 CD form; the disc closes up shop at 78:19, a minute and forty-one seconds before they would run out of space.

What would be an interesting exercise for the BJM would be to release a double-disc version of “My Bloody Underground”, pairing the rough mixes that the band released before the album dropped with the finished versions that ultimately made it onto “My Bloody Underground”. Individuals that want something that is catchy and hooky may look towards other BJM albums; this album compels based on the experimental facet of the band that comes to light here. When individuals enter a journey that is eight minutes long, as is the case with “Who Cares Why?”, one has to keep in mind that the runtime only notices the physical length of the song. The tracks are intricate and elicit a number of different emotions based on the specific condition of the individual going into the album. In some sense, what the BJM does here is provide individuals with a trip. It is the idiosyncrasies of the listeners that will ultimately determine how the album is received.

Top Tracks: Who Cares Why, Monkey Powder

Rating: 7.0/10