Review Summary: Better, but not quite there.
"Investment," to me, is one of the most important words in any type of music (or any form of art, for that matter). If a musician doesn't care about the work he or she is creating, why should the audience? That's why commercial music is a path that one should tread lightly, seeing as a piece of work could just be a soulless cash grab and be rendered meaningless artistically. Perhaps one of the best examples of soullessness, arrogance, and boredom in recent years is the electronic duo Blood on the Dance Floor, who have put out atrocity after atrocity. It's truly remarkable how large their audience is (mainly consisting of scene kids who seem to enjoy the members' image and personalities), considering their dumbed-down brand of electropop. With any album of your choosing, you'd hear weak attempts at both rapping and singing, cheap beats that sound like they could have come from Chuck E. Cheese animatronics, and crass lyrics that make the rape scene in A Clockwork Orange seem subtle. So with all of this in mind, how does their 6th album (in just 5 or so years, I might add) Bad Blood stack up against these disasterpieces? Well, it could definitely have been worse...
Bad Blood, believe it or not, does manage to improve the duo's sound a bit. It's by no means a good album, but the beats are more solid and the compositions are more tolerable. There's even - dare I say it? - some much-needed maturity found within the familiar electropop sound heard on the surface. That isn't to say their original attitude has left them, though; just listen to that ridiculous profane rapping in the first track "Unchained." Luckily, that song remains a highlight due to occasional dynamic variety and a wildly bombastic chorus that is undeniably fun to listen to. It does, however, display the band's overall arrogance and unwillingness to listen to their many "haters." Either way, one thing that's refreshing about this record in contrast to their previous works is the abundance of moments when the duo slow down for some atmosphere. "Damaged" follows typical pop note progressions, but ends up redeemed by its melodic chorus and the different ways the group play with the beat tempos. The melancholic atmosphere is surprisingly effective, and it'd be nice to hear more of this sound from the band in the future. "Crucified by Your Lies" has a pretty self-explanatory title and the rapping is pretty bland, but the high-pitched keyboard melodies offer some variety to the synthesizers and the group at least sound like they're trying to create something more emotional than usual. Unfortunately, a lot of dreck still ends up pulling this album way down. As with previous BOTDF records, the album suffers from being overly generic and boring, particularly with its mid-tempo songs. A good number of them, such as "Morning Star" and "Revenge Will Have Its Day," appear late in the record and kill whatever quality or proverbial momentum the duo had. Even many of the other ballads get overbearing after a while; it's fine to draw the listener in with atmosphere, but not when there are too many of those tracks to draw from. The album ends up drowning in its own cheesy balladry and the faster tunes only serve to kill the pacing. In other words: the album is too long and drawn out, and also too inconsistent. Despite the positives mentioned earlier, Bad Blood is only a slight step toward the boys actually making a genuinely good record. If they focus more on compositional variety and displaying more atmosphere instead of lyrical immaturity and half-baked mid-tempo numbers, we could have a good record on our hands. But at least this is a slight step in the right direction.
