Chris DeLine

Ah yes, the spooky kids. It’s really hard to stay away from poking fun at a band which appear entirely in Hot Topic clad, and call themselves Chibi, M. Falcore, Rainbow, Aslan, Rhim and o-en. OK, and they have song titles like “Horror Show,” “Play Dead,” and “Happy Birthday.” Please bear with me. The band is actually pretty good. Hailing originally from London, Ontario, TBM began in 2000 calling themselves Imagica; once again, please bear with me.

I’d like to refer to a band that I really enjoyed at their peak in popularity, Orgy. Like them, The Birthday Massacre play to a very distinct audience; one that is generally criticized and looked down on. The band plays the same electro-power chord driven hard rock that was under-appreciated when clumped in with the nĂ¼-metal of the late ’90s. I say under-appreciated, because it’s actually good. While I could go on about how corny the shell of the music is, it’s the underlying sound that really shows the band’s substance.

The first song I ever heard of the band was their track “Video Kid.” It was floating around the SXSW page, where they appeared recently, and it struck me as really sharp; definitely not what I had been hearing in indie rock as of late. After getting further into the band, Violet really shapes up as something that I think some indie rockers border on and attempt to succeed at. “Happy Birthday” is a fairly powerful track, despite the tackiness found in its lyrically “dark” facade. It harkens back to the best music Orgy ever put out (sorry I keep referring to them, but they’re really about as far deep into the genre as I went). It’s harder and harder to find a musical niche, and genre-come-lately has been electro/synth rock. The Birthday Massacre play a harder version of what a lot of other modern bands are playing, and do it a lot better than many out there. It just so happens that the band’s music is associated with a fairly unsettling period for hard rock. Them’s the breaks, I suppose.

[This post was first published by Culture Bully.]