Brokencyde

• 1. Introduction

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  Brokencyde formed in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2006, and within three years had debuted on the Billboard 200 and attracted some of the most colorfully hostile reviews in recent music history. A writer for the Warsaw Business Journal tried to capture their sound by asking readers to imagine an impassioned triceratops mating with a steam turbine, while Daft Punk and the Bee Gees beat each other to death with skillets and spatulas nearby. That was a relatively measured take. The New Musical Express suggested that making someone listen to the group's debut album would be too severe a punishment even for an act involving Prince Harry, Gary Glitter, Nazi regalia, and a grandmother's letterbox. Critics lined up to bury them. Kids, apparently, had other ideas. What kind of band draws that level of creative fury from professional listeners while simultaneously building a real fanbase, landing MTV appearances, touring the US and Europe, and still releasing music nearly two decades later? That question is worth sitting with.

• 2. A Scene Born Online

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  Michael "Mikl" Shea and David "Se7en" Gallegos founded Brokencyde, and the name itself came from a shared sense that their music was "broke inside" due to personal problems. Julian "Phat J" McLellan and Anthony "Antz" Trujillo joined after the group began promoting themselves online, turning what started as a two-person project into a four-piece act. Kerrang! labeled them a "Myspace band," and Metal Hammer echoed that description, both acknowledging how central that platform was to their early growth. The band members described themselves as "scene kids," a designation that placed them squarely inside a mid-2000s internet subculture built around niche aesthetics, personal style, and online community. Their debut mixtape, The Broken!, came out on the 7th of July 2007, followed the next year by Tha $c3n3 Mixtape. The deliberate misspellings in both titles were a visual language that spoke directly to the crowd they were courting. By July 2008, that crowd had grown large enough to get the group onto MTV's Total Request Live, where they performed "FreaXXX" on the network's "Under the Radar" segment.

• 3. Crunkcore and Its Critics

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  AllMusic described Brokencyde as combining screamo and crunk into a high-energy party music hybrid, adding that the band also incorporated elements of pop rap, emo, and dance music. That mix is the foundation of crunkcore, a genre Brokencyde is recognized as helping to found. Crunk hip hop layered beneath screamed vocals is the basic architecture, but the band's version pushed in several directions at once. AllMusic characterized their lyrics as "filled with sick jokes and emotional outbursts," while Kerrang! called those same lyrics "seriously questionable." Cracked.com contributor Michael Swaim said the band sounded like "a Slipknot-Cher duet." His colleague Adam Tod Brown, commenting specifically on "FreaXXX," wrote that he hated the song so much he would hold it face down in a bathtub until it drowned if he could. British comic book writer Warren Ellis described the "FreaXXX" music video as "a near-perfect snapshot of everything that's shit about this point in the culture." August Brown of the Los Angeles Times offered a more analytical take, comparing what Brokencyde had done for Myspace emo to what some believe Soulja Boy did for hip-hop: creating something so far beyond the boundaries of irony and sincerity that asking whether they were joking was like peeling an onion in search of a core that does not exist.

• 4. Breakthrough and Backlash

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  The group's first full-length album, I'm Not a Fan, But the Kids Like It!, debuted at number 86 on the Billboard 200 in July 2009, a result that landed above expectations for a band whose name was synonymous with critical contempt. That summer they were featured on the US Warped Tour 2009, but left the tour in August to play shows in Europe instead. They had already signed with Suburban Noize Records the previous summer and released the BC13 EP on the 11th of November 2008, timed to a promotion with the retail chain Hot Topic. Before that, in July 2008, they had appeared on MTV's Total Request Live. The touring schedule around this period shows how seriously the band was working the circuit: dates on a Millionaires-headlined tour, two appearances on Fearless Music TV performing "Sex Toyz" and "FreaXXX" in December 2008, and later runs with Eyes Set to Kill, And Then There Were None, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Senses Fail, Hollywood Undead, and Haste The Day.

• 5. Turbulence and Departure

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  In April 2011, members of Brokencyde assaulted Punchline drummer Cory Muro at Smiling Moose in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Muro needed three staples in his head; his friend Johnny Grushecky ended up with a broken nose. The incident sat alongside the band's ongoing creative output rather than stopping it. Their third studio album, Guilty Pleasure, came out on the 8th of November 2011, and an updated version titled Guilty Pleasurez followed on the 13th of March 2012, supported by a European tour. In 2012 they played the Fight to Unite Tour alongside Blood on the Dance Floor, Deuce, Polkadot Cadaver, William Control, and The Bunny the Bear. Then, on the 29th of October 2012, Julian "Phat J" McLellan announced through his official YouTube page that he was leaving Brokencyde to pursue a solo career, describing the split as amicable. Antz would also eventually depart, leaving the group significantly changed from its founding configuration.

• 6. Crowdfunding, Self-Release, and Persistence

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  In December 2014, Brokencyde launched an Indiegogo campaign with a target of US$30,000 to fund the recording and marketing of a new album called All Grown Up. When the funding period closed in February 2015-33 backers had contributed a total of US$1,421, less than five percent of the goal. Most bands would have shelved the project. Brokencyde released the album anyway, putting out a self-released 23-track record that carried the same title. That persistence became a pattern. When they signed with Cleopatra Records through its X-Ray Records imprint in April 2018, they released the album 0 to Brokencyde on the 22nd of June 2018, their fourth studio album. In 2022, Se7en took a leave from the group, and Phat J returned to the lineup, reconnecting the band with one of its original four members. By the late 2010s and early 2020s, critics had begun drawing lines between Brokencyde and the hyperpop acts that followed them, naming artists like 100 gecs as artists who arrived in territory the Albuquerque group had reached first.