F**ked Up - David Comes To Life
When the name of your band has an expletive in the title you’re setting certain expectations upon your music: there’s no excuse for your band turning out some Adele-light, Radio 1 pleasing, schmaltzy ballad. No. It’s got to be mosh-pit inducing, ear-bleeding noise. It’s got to be not-giving-a-damn, Iggy Pop raw power. It’s got to be F**ked Up.
If you’re not familiar with this Canadian hard-core punk outfit, let me offer a small introduction to their work. The band gained popularity and infamy through their prolific output of 7” and 12” records, which total well over 60 since the band’s formation in 2001. Collected on 2004’s album Epic in Minutes and 2010’s Couple Tracks, these singles show a clear view on what the group have to offer: short blasts of energetic, aggressive, intelligent punk often twisted and distorted yet filled with new ideas and spleen-punching, gut wrenching riffs. It is music that leaves you on the edge of your seat and out of breath. It’s punk with a capital FU.
But it is in their studio albums that the band really pushes the boundary of what you would expect from punk. What do I mean? Well, David Comes to Life, the band’s third and latest album is a 78-minute hard-core punk-rock opera. That’s what I mean.
David Comes to Life, a four act story of loss and redemption, death and rebirth, seemingly focuses around the fall and rise of the album’s titular David yet, when you penetrate the screaming wall of sound the band creates, is a tale of a town full of rich and deep characters. As obtuse as that wall of sound may be at first, it becomes a curtain you’ll want to peek a glance behind. First time round this record can obliterate your senses such is the ferocity it packs, yet you’ll catch fragments of lyrics, splinters of larger ideas if your anything like me, they’ll stick in your side and in your head and you’ll want to delve further and deeper into the album.
It’s great to hear F**ked Up expanding their sound, trying to find a sound that matches up to their ideas. It’s punk that has moved from the underground into the stadium. Just listen to track ‘I was There’ to see how, for this group, there are no borders to scope and scale. Yet they’re not going to be to everybody’s taste: I understand they’re not a band you can sit and relax with, or dance along to at a club. But don’t pass this album by just because of your preconceptions because if you do, you’ll be missing what is one of this year’s great records.
Daniel W. Raper.
