I’m sorry, I just have to post this, it was just too funny not to:

This kid doesn’t like us. The review is in the second half of the post. I hate to make an example of someone and to call attention to something so negative but it bears addressing for the simple fact that, as criticisms go, this is the most common one we get. I recognize that we’re not for everyone, and I definitely don’t want to be, but I find it pretty painful to learn that a band’s merit lies almost solely in their attractiveness. I hate that, in the estimation of the average music listener, the listening isn’t what comes first. I hate that, to them, you’re dismissed without further investigation if you don’t look pretty or if you aren’t thin. Even people who presumably know better, people who pride themselves in bucking systems, in being rebels, in having brains, pander to the they’re-not-hot-enough game.

I get really frustrated when we go to shows and bands parade an attractive, young woman in something revealing before the crowd but I understand that that’s often the only way to get someone to listen. How sad and shallow is the average music “fan” that their ears will only open when all the blood rushes to their dick.

As I said, I recognize that we’re not for everyone. We know full well that we have a lot of strikes against us when we take the stage, particularly when its with bands that don’t come from the same place musically. We’re leftists and feminists and that turns people off. We scream and that turns people off. We’re old and fat and that turns people off. We don’t have a drum kit and that turns people off. We don’t have a guitar or bass live and that turns people off. We don’t have a light and fog show or evil backing video and that turns people off.

I can’t help but recall after we played the Toronto Digital Hardcore fest reading a review of Hansel in which some kid, not unlike the one who posted his criticism of us last night, complained that the band members wore a straw hat, jeans, sneakers and track pants instead of something a digital hardcore band “should” wear. As if the underground has some kind of a uniform.

We’re not angry at what that kid said, it’s true. Every time we get a comment like that or we get some kind of a criticism that sparks our fury or gives us pause, we write a song about it. So, my little narrow-minded friend, the next one’s for you.