Not a particularly new picture of them (Sean's hair has been about four different colours since then) but idc I love it
The Blackout are a great band, they really are. Six guys, fronted by Gavin Butler (nice singing) and Sean Smith (loud angry singing and screaming), from Merthyr Tydfil in Wales - no, I haven't heard of it either - who are part of that group of Really Good Bands That Somehow Appeared From Darkest Wales, such as Kids In Glass Houses and Lostprophets. Incidentally, The Blackout supported Lostprophets on tour. There's Smatkins fanfiction out there (Sean Smith + Ian Watkins . . .).
But that's beside the point. I'm talking about The Blackout specifically here, and how brilliant they are because, although they're definitely not an unknown band - they've just returned from playing Soundwave along with the likes of Mindless Self Indulgence, Of Mice & Men and Bring Me The Horizon - I don't feel like they're as known as they should be. The kind of sounds they make, they should be filling up the MEN, not just the Ritz. Even I don't give them as much love as I should do, and I've got . . . let's see . . . seven TBO posters in my room. I saw them in November 2011 as my First Ever Proper Gig, although that didn't go too brilliantly for me because of my concert fear. I wanted to see them this January when they were at HMV Ritz, and I nearly threw myself out of a double decker bus to get in when I went past the venue on the day and saw all the fans outside. I was seriously contemplating not going to a friend's birthday so I could see them.
I like that they have such a massive variety of sounds as you listen through their discography, ranging from the very stereotypical 'emo' kind of music at the beginning in We Are The Dynamite, through to more pop rocky type stuff, and then onto Start The Party (their newest album, released this January), but they're all done really well and in a very obvious TBO kind of way. There's no other band that I know of that sounds quite like them, which is good, because there's a lot of pop punk bands out there that you could swap and change without noticing.
Their older stuff is a lot more WE ARE VERY ANGRY ABOUT ALL THE STUFF (see Fashion Conscious Suicide, for example) but sometimes it's good to have music like that, for when you are VERY ANGRY ABOUT ALL THE STUFF. None of it sounds half-hearted, so even if it is a bit melodramatic, at least they mean it, which I think counts for a lot. I don't like it when it sounds like a band are just sticking with the first half-decent sounds they can come up with.
Then you get onto the more recent album, The Best in Town and Hope, it gets slightly less screamy - although The Fire and We're Going To Hell . . . So Bring The Sunblock are still in that vein - and more mainstream style rock, but still awesome. I got The Best In Town as one of my 16th birthday presents, and I listened to it on repeat for quite some time. I still need to get hold of Hope in physical format, but I have it and it's a brilliant album (will dance for adjectives). It's more neat and polished than the previous albums, and in some places a lot more chilled than them as well, but there's no mistaking that it's them.
Start The Party's an album that I like, but it's still kind of growing on me, because although there are songs on there that I love, there's some others, like You, that sound a bit bored and quite obviously like they could do better. I don't know, I just personally prefer it when Gavin does the proper singing. Still, there are some proper party songs on there, which is what they were going for, I suppose.
I also love - in fangirly mode here - that they've done tours with both Pierce The Veil and My Chemical Romance, because AWEOEJFIJDSOIFJDSKJF. There's that and their shameless plugging of their various clothes lines - Sean label Dirty Love and Gavin's label Monster Merchandise, for example - which really aren't that bad. I can't express how much I want a Cool Cats Clan t-shirt, although their actual band merch is really cool, and I keep accidentally spending a lot of money on it - seriously, look (I have the cat one):
That said, here are five of my favourite TBO songs:
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