Bad Blood (Bonus Edition)

Since 2008 or so, nothing screams "I wish I'd never been born!" like bringing home — or right clicking — a Blood on the Dance Floor album. The "scene"/"anti-scene" group has been alienating adults for a while now with their ghoulish looks and hateful, dark lyrics, all of them set to — and here's the real tricky part — Miley Cyrus-worthy electro-pop with a bit of rap shoehorned in (and that's rap like 2Pac never happened). In other words, you can hate them because they're subversive or you can hate them because they're too "mass appeal," but the "troubled" tweens (taking Maslow's hierarchy of needs into consideration) understand, and like the record label says, this one is straight up Dark Fantasy. Well, most of it is anyway, as "Crucified by Your Lies" addresses the real-life rape allegations that were thrown on the band via a fan with Twitter access, as "Hi, my name is Jesus, like the man that was crucified/Bitches with their lies, almost pushed me to suicide" and "call me a pedophile/underage is not my style" sets the record straight over soft and stately, synth pop-worthy of Army of Lovers, Pet Shop Boys, or Ke$ha. More true talk about forum posts threatens to make this a concept album as "I Refuse to Sink" offers "Sum your life up in a tweet, 'cause I can't/That' not me, That's me pretending" while the title track goes all insider with "Claim to be SGTC, but you were faking it," referencing the group's fans (the Slash Gash Terror Crew) before the chorus asks all fakers to eat excrement and then shuffle off this mortal coil (in so many words). Rounding out the album are more outward-looking moments like the vampire-electro-love ballad "Always & Forever," plus the pissed-off political commentary of "Bohemyth," where the line "Are we too broke to pay attention?" floats like a real, revelatory talking point, bobbing in a sea of hot topics from the mall ("The government is the mark of the Beast") and ripped-pantyhose punditry that borrows from Churchill ("This is tyranny, ruled by fear, drowning in irony"). All that said, it's the insider stuff that will likely give the SGTC set their biggest thrill, and with so much of it surrounded by the usual tween angst manna (haters should die, ex-boyfriends should die, ex-friends should die, I am the universe and my kitten should live forever), Bad Blood is better than before, or at least, bloodier.