From Piano Island to Evil Island, it feels so, so fucking good, right, and just to have most of The Blood Brothers back performing sasscore hypnotherapy on our addled Millennial minds like only they can.
Release date: August 14, 2026 | Blowed Out Records | Instagram | TikTok | Bandcamp
I’ve mentioned and/or written about The Blood Brothers at least ten times during my time at Everything Is Noise. I counted. This not only goes to show what a big fan of them I am, but also how much reverence I hold and just how pervasive they can be depending on the topic. Any bands worth their salt near the shores of post-hardcore, eclectic punk, or avant-rock should – and likely do – have a locket with Jordan Billie and Johnny Whitney’s faces in it. There’s not many other bands that helped define my teenage years in the way they did. Potentially millions of others would say the same. Ask your work’s marketing manager or accounting specialist you suspect of sporting scene hairdos in 2005 or rocking studded belts holding up skinny jeans that draped over legs thin enough to evoke Invader Zim character proportions.
Evil Island isn’t the next best thing to The Blood Brothers, it is the actual fucking radioactive progression of their sound. While not quite as bone-breakingly wild as the band that was ripping shit up on stages two decades ago, the spirit is absolutely intact. Singer Whitney, guitarist Cody Votolato, and drummer Mark Gajadhar link up like motherfucking Voltron with bassist Autry Fulbright II (OFF!, …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead) and Todd Weinstock (Glassjaw) on second guitar. Ultraproducer Ross Robinson also returns to provide his guiding light. The vibes could not be more on point and it still doesn’t fully prepare you for the back-arching fuckathon that Terraform the Afterlife is.
Evil Island scored this return with all the catchiness you’d hope for. 13 tracks and just about every single one is as memorable and immediately entertaining as the hits from the 2000s, inspiring shirtless screamalongs and karate flailing like you were playing Tekken 8 with motion controls. It’s unbridled energy packed into buckshot to be tossed into your skull like celebratory confetti while the voices from Charlie the Unicorn orate pastel-colored poems about your life (then take your kidney). In other words, they are next-level good.
Goddamn, I love “Animal”. This single is lethally fun with a great chorus and vividly violent lyrics that tug at the fabric of reality. I’ve always interpreted these types of lyrics to be a defiant game of chicken with death itself, a fantasy of immortality hinging on all the ways you can imagine dying without it happening. Some would call it tempting fate, but fate implies Evil Island capitulate to such a higher power which, in their powerful mythology, doesn’t seem probable. It even has a nice hidden feature from Lis Di Angelo (Filth Is Eternal), always good to hear from them.
Opening track “Melted Heart” really kicks down the damn door of Evil Island. Featuring Alexis Krauss of Sleigh Bells, it really captures that quickened pace that made the explosive songs we all love from the past. Whitney’s creativity is in full effect for the lyrics:
‘Octopus queen, you crawled out of my mouth
I’ve got your name tattooed on my tongue
Spread my ribs, my soul’s rotting inside
High five my heart like a gong
Octopus queen, you’ve got your venom in me
Now I’m picking fights with parked cars
Super model with shit smeared in my teeth
Crucify myself on your lawn’
Post-hardcore royalty Guy Picciotto of Fugazi shows up on “T-Hexx” which seems to channel that legendary band a bit with its progression and calmer instrumentation compared to much of the rest of Terraform the Afterlife. That doesn’t stop Whitney from frothing into the mic with his own agenda. Of course I would be a worthless asshole to not talk about Jordan Billie’s time on this album. Billie is on “I Bought A Spell” which is one of the odder tracks here with powering, thrashy segments grafted to more melodic and poppy asides that sound like they could be from a song by The Primitives. It’s so cool to hear Billie’s croon next to Whitney’s screech again, it warms my heart so much. He also shows up on “Moonlight Doomlight” in a similar fashion which is a paradoxically uplifting track with this neat little vocal harmony that punctuates verses while the drums bang on with a palpable excitement.
The best part about Evil Island out of the freighter-sized amount I both have and haven’t pointed out here is that their music totally fits in with the contemporary canon of effusive, weirdo music built on in the last ten years. Dead Cross, Squid Pisser, Melted Bodies, and so many more feel right at home standing side by side with Evil Island at the starting blocks ready to jump into a razor blade pool together for a race to see who gets gutted the most. I’ve always maintained that The Blood Brothers were ahead of their time even as they were emblematic of the new millennium that they grabbed by the scruff, dipped in rainbow blood, and pressed onto the walls of the countercultural zeitgeist like a roller brush. Now, not only do they feel like they truly belong in this world fucked further beyond belief, but they still dare to lead the pack, running down the street screaming ‘LAS VEGAS, FUCK THIS PLACE, FUCK THE MARSHAL, FUCK THE DA‘.
Evil Island is fastidious to its members’ own legends. It’s incredibly impressive and fascinating how they managed to channel themselves from decades ago (or add their own accoutrements to that as new members) without it becoming a trite, bullshit cash grab, straddling your body and pressing the blade tip of hollow nostalgia toward your eye as you struggle back. Terraform the Afterlife should not have happened, and if it did, it should have been middling, a husk of what once was, a waste of potential, a legacy-staining endeavor. Instead, it’s biting, acerbic, spry, a continuous brilliant flash of a detonated nuclear bomb refracting off your retinas until your brain leaks out your nose. Most importantly, it’s an incomprehensibly good album that extends the unrivaled heritage of post-9/11 Millennial boundary pushing and reckoning with a world that no longer cares for us.
