Exhilarating tunes.
It’s hard not to love Fucked Up for their playful approach to and manipulation of information regarding themselves; no myspace, no official band website, just a blog and an often tampered with Wikipedia page giving misleading information, not to mention their odd aliases and quirky press releases on which not all the information is imagined; it gives an even greater level of fun to their heavy duty yet melodic punk. Not even they can avoid hype though and there’s been plenty of that around lately, luckily though it’s all good and all deserved.
‘Son the Father’ is a brilliant album opener, seriously hooky, seriously heavy, an excellent female/male vocal mix ensures variety, the guitars are fast and the melody is super catchy, it’s exhilarating and feels more like a snappy two and a half minute punk song rather than its actual six and a half minute length. If you’re not in love with the band after this track, then this is not the record for you. This punchy start is followed up with ‘Magic Word’ which has a cacophony of overlapping sounds, awkward rhythms and hypnotic riffs, ‘Golden Seal’ confounds expectations with a swirling keyboard and rhythmic chiming from the guitars and when the distorted fuzz comes in it feels as if it’s about to get really heavy, but it never does, leaving you perpetually on the edge of a climax, genius.
Four tracks in, ‘Days of Last’ has thunderous noise coupled with melodic riffs, it’s wickedly danceable with a groove that really gets under your skin, ten tracks in and the instrumental ‘Looking for God’ brings you no closer to being able to pin down a typical song for the band, thankfully. Fucked Up’s gloriously discordant melodic tunes play fast and easy with punk conventions, but at their heart they retain a raw edginess and attitude that is punk through and through; tracks like ‘Black Albino Bones’ which has a touch of indie in the fuzzy guitars and sweet second vocals mix things up, but Pink Eyes’ gruff lead vocals keep it raw. If you like your punk playful, theatrical and melodic but still heavy and immediate, you cannot be without this record.