Don’t Be Too Blindsided By The Title

Good grief, Johnny Franck. You’ve come back into my life and in the most beautiful of ways that makes me reminisce back to the days of Attack Attack!. This week is ALL ABOUT BILMURI MY FRIENDS!

We recently spoke about indie alternative/pop - yea this is not that. This is a mix of metal meets pop meets country meets djent that is sort adjacent to funk in the way that La Croix flavors are after thought (I still love you croix, promise).

Back Pedal - Who Is Johnny Franck?

Johnny Franck (AKA the Bilmuri mastermind) has been around the metal music scene for a long time. He cut his chops back (singer + guitar) in the mid 2000s/early 2010 with metalcore band Attack Attack! who were INCREDIBLY influential on my music taste, as well as many others. There was so much turmoil around this band in members leaving, drama, and much more, but they were heavily genre defining and still influence bands today and you can hear “their” sound everywhere. If you want to learn more on Attack Attack! there are documentaries on YouTube.

Changing the game in metal music seems to come easy to Mr. Franck, because franckly (heh) he just has that gift, that ability. I truly believe that by him creating music that means something to him coupled with his incredible musical ability is what delivers the beautiful music he creates, he just has this distinct ability to create something catchy. Bilmuri started as more of an emo/metalcore-y/poppy type of sound, but it has blossomed into a space of its own, and I TRULY mean that. He has started to also incorporate a lot more personality and humor into song titles, music videos, and with the general aesthetic.

How Has He Defined Bilmuri?

I don’t think he WOULD define Bilmuri, and nor should he. It has taken a few years for Johnny to sort of find the sound he wants the most out of Bilmuri. Self titled and Letters were leaning into shoegaze, synth heavy sounds, and emo tendencies that I think we can still feel in the more recent releases. I think this is where Johnny began to learn more music production, what sounds he preferred, and how he wanted to construct music generally. With releases like Banana and those that followed shortly after - we started getting more and more comedy and personality thrown into the mix. And Gabi Rose the sax enjoyer joins…

To this day, he leans into working with friends in the metal space (had a stretch of shows with former Issues drummer Josh Manuel, song with Caleb Shomo, song with Dayseeker, etc.) but also breaking into pop and country with collabs with Knox and Dylan Marlowe. I think that its very hard to recommend a specific album, so I’m going to rec a few.

BILMURI TUNES… LET’S GET INTO IT

Bilmuri - AMERICAN MOTOR SPORTS. This album has catchy chorus after catchy chorus. Expect to headbang, groove stank face, and to laugh. The collabs on here are where you’ll notice some country elements and I think they rock. This album really does not have a bad song, cannot recommend it enough.

album rating - 9.8/10, fave track - EMPTYHANDED

Bilmuri - GOBLIN HOURS. It’s goblin hours, bitches. Nah, forreal this album slaps. The opener sets the mood, and then we sort of get shocked by how unbelievably groovy it is. This is where we start to hear more sax, who doesn’t love a sax. I think this album does have moments where I forget what genre it is, pop to metal to pop to whatever. Listen, dance, have a good time!

album rating - 9.1/10, fave track - CORN-FED YETIS

Bilmuri - 400LB BACK SQUAT. This is definitely lighter on the "banger” front of the previous two recs. With that said, this album has some top notch guitar riffs, some exploration of sound that we then get used to. Also, the song names are absolutely unhinged, but we are used to that by now.

album rating - 8.9/10, fave track - ACOWBOYSHEAVYLOAD

This was a FUN ONE MY FELLOW GOBLINS! I do hope you all have enjoyed this week’s Finetuned! I appreciate any insights, opinions, thoughts, admiration, or otherwise. You can direct that towards my email or DM me on Twitter. ([email protected])

Please do share Finetuned with your friends & fam! I believe great music should be shared, cherished, and understood from all sorts of perspectives.

See you all in the next one! 🙌