Sometime during The Blood Brothers’ frenetic set at The House of Blues on Halloween, I lost my sweater. I think it was wrenched from my hands by someone attempting to stay upright in the crazy melee on the floor. I couldn’t bring myself to worry about the fate of my poor garment, though; The Blood Brothers put on a show so exhausting, intense and fun that I was happy to sacrifice my sweater to the chaos.

Dressed as cops for the evening, The Blood Brothers played their genre-defying blend of hardcore and post-punk with incredible energy. Vocalists Jordan Billie and Johnny Whitney wail as they sputter and hop around stage like hyper bunnies. Their spastic performance style reflects the nature of their unique sounding music. Songs like “Cecilia and the Silhouette Saloon,” with its atypical structure and electronic backing and “Laser Life,” an eerily funky hardcore song, were especially captivating when performed live.

The crowd was easily as anarchic as The Blood Brothers’ music. The floor degenerated into an epic mosh pit, with hundreds of anxious youths grooving and smashing into each other for nearly an hour. The atmosphere of the show was friendly despite the violence- the bodily contact wasn’t malicious in nature, it was rather a physical expression of cathartic release.

A few other un-noteworthy bands played at the show…. And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead was co-headlining, but their show fell flat due to sloppiness and a lack of compelling material. A band called Celebration played before The Blood Brothers, but they seemed merely to be a celebration of crappy dance rock. Brothers and Sisters, the opening band, was essentially an entertaining imitation of The Shins.

At the end of The Blood Brothers’ performance, I saw my missing sweater fly through the air. It was tattered and completely annihilated, and I felt exactly the same way.

-Andrew Sheivachman