Features | Awards

The Know Your Audience Award

By Andrew Hall | 17 December 2009

Whoever designed the one-sheet accompanying promotional copies of Brokencyde :: I’m Not a Fan…But The Kids Like It!
(Break Silence / Suburban Noize; 2009)







Unlike the majority of mediocre bands that send their CDs to independent radio, Brokencyde opted not to bother to dig up an encouraging sentence or two from their two fans getting published or to make up awards that their music had received. In fact, they didn’t do anything to say that the experience one would get from listening to Brokencyde would be positive. Over half the page is dedicated to press quotes, none of which are at all positive, from sources like NME, a member of Senses Fail, Kerrang!, Warren Ellis, the Los Angeles Times, and MTVu.

Yet at the very top of the list is a quote from one Steve Albini, culled from some interview he gave while Shellac was on tour earlier this year: “If you share any similarity with a band like Brokencyde you’re almost guaranteed to have me not like your band.” The people responsible for this one sheet realized exactly who’d be reading them—predominantly bearded dudes who are likely far more interested in listening to anything Steve Albini has worked on, even anonymous singer-songwriter records, than Brokencyde’s crunk screamo—and seemed to know exactly how to bait them into talking about their one sheet, even if that still means I’m Not a Fan…But The Kids Like It! receives no airplay and widespread derision. Congratulations, guys responsible for the Brokencyde one-sheet, for figuring out how to spark conversation about Brokencyde with only one mention of how terrible their music is or how old I must be getting to deem one-sheets awardworthy.