Musings On Brokencyde: The Worst MySpace Band Ever

Part of my workday revolves around gathering MySpace Music data --a tedious and painstaking task, largely due to the considerable number of dubious "artists" represented on the site whose music and images I have to endure during my research.

A couple of months ago, I happened upon a band called Brokencyde (they write it "brokeNCYDE", but I'm not going to comply with such silliness). After a little examination, I informed my coworkers that, with all certainty, I had found the worst, most offensive band on MySpace ever (no small feat, let me assure you). They agreed.

Ever since then, Brokencyde has been a constant topic of discussion/ridicule/disgust in my office and, seemingly, in every other facet of my life as well. They have practically consumed my every waking thought and hours upon hours of my time that I will never get back. Today, as I happened on their profile again while working, I realized that I had spent more time thinking and listening to Brokencyde than most bands I actually like.

But no more. It ends today. I am using this blog as a means of closure and by paying them forward to you, I am exorcising these demons from my person once and for all. Just consider me little Regan MacNeil from The Exorcist and you, my friend, are about to be Father Karras.

And trust me, you'll want to throw yourself out the window too after you watch Brokencyde's video for a song called "Freaxxx":



I know, right. There's no words to describe what you just saw.

Well, let's let British commentator Warren Ellis do the talking. He calls Brokencyde's "Freaxxx" music video "a near-perfect snapshot of everything that’s shit about this point in the culture."

Well put.

But perhaps August Brown of the Los Angeles Times sums up Brokencyde best by quipping:

"[Brokencyde] has done for MySpace emo what some think Soulja Boy did for hip-hop: turn their career into a kind of macro-performance art that exists so far beyond the tropes of irony and sincerity that to ask 'are they kidding?' is like trying to peel an onion to get to a perceived central core that, in the end, does not exist and renders all attempts to reassemble the pieces futile."

Couldn't have said it better myself...