Blood for Blood – “Ain’t Like You (Wasted Youth II)”

I don’t listen to a lot of hardcore, but I fucking love Blood For Blood.  While other hardcore bands are preaching unity, positivity, straight edge, blah blah blah, Blood For Blood are getting shit-faced, hating everything that breathes and generally fucking up your world.  Their music is a bludgeoning, nihilistic fist in the face and their lyrical tough guy-isms aren’t mere posturing; Blood For Blood are tough because life as they know it is complete and utter shit.

“Ain’t Like You (Wasted Youth II)” comes from Blood For Blood’s 2002 album Outlaw Anthems (which along with 1999’s Livin’ in Exile represents the band’s peak) and is easily my favorite song in their enitre catalogue.  It’s crude, violent and ugly, with the kind of lovably offensive lyrics you want to scream at the top of your lungs while burning down your school, your church and your place of employment, or repeatedly taking a Louisville slugger to the skull of your worst enemy while they’re helplessly tied to a tree.  It’s all executed with such pure brute force, you can’t help but get the feeling that Blood For Blood mean every word.

It’s no secret that I’m a total cream-puff; I’ve never been in a fight, I’m getting too old for moshing and quite frankly if I ever went to a Blood For Blood show I’d probably get the ever-living fuck beat out of me.  But there’s still something about blasting a song like “Ain’t Like You (Wasted Youth II)” that tickles the hell out of my lizard brain, causing my inner neanderthal to go berserk.  One of the great things about music is that we can live vicariously through it, and Blood For Blood’s three-minute-and-thirty-second beatdown is a perfect example.