Breaking News:Toronto-based punk-rock legends
FUCKED UP to release debut full-length
"Hidden World" October 10th on
Jade Tree!
"Ironically, their fast and sloppy early-80s-styled hardcore is a million times more musical and ferocious than 99% of professional myspace-era mosh bands, and their fans' postshow cuts and bruises remind us that this shit might have the potential to still be dangerous." - VICE
"I truly believe these guys are the second coming of hardcore... they are Incredible." - MRR"Toronto's Fucked Up get it so right. Their hardcore telepathically bridges the early 80's, reaches even further back for intelligence, and is blazing across this great land of ours, one shitty stereo and uncool kid at a time." - THRASHERFucked Up isn’t the prototypical hardcore band. The songs on
"Hidden World" average five + minutes and have violins, acoustic guitars, samples, piano and other instrumentation.
Fucked Up is pretty fucked up.
As a band,
Fucked Up exist as miscreants, operating outside the parameters of traditional society. No one in the band (comprised of
Pink Eyes- vocals,
Concentration Camp- guitar,
Mr. Jo- drums,
Mustard Gas- bass,
10,000 Marbles- guitar) owns a cell phone or can legally operate a vehicle. Relationships between band mates are often strained (Pink Eyes has even avoided a European tour because, "The prospect of sitting in a van with those dudes made me sick to my stomach").
3/5 of the band is plagued by bouts of mental illness (
"Pink Eyes has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Concentration Camp and I have been depressed for good parts of our adult lives," says guitarist 10,000 Marbles.)
The band has been accused of championing fascism (
"Mixing fascist imagery with a leftist anarchist punk band is like a bomb going off," according to the band.) The list continues;
bewildering interviews in Vice Magazine, anarchist arrests in Canada, episodes of self-mutilation via razor blade and a slew of hard to find singles are but a few of the enigmatic characteristics that have embodied
Fucked Up for the past five years.
Fucked Up came from nothing out of the Toronto, Canada punk scene, on their own accordance. Influences, both lyrical and musical, were mostly culled from within (though the band does cite
Pink Floyd as a point of reference to their "more drawn out shit"), and the band slowly rose from obscurity without the obligatory tour and play with bigger band mentality of the modern punk scene. The band shuns full- length releases in favor of two-song singles, utilizes biological concepts to enact social change within their music, and has even been accused of mind control by some of their detractors. Illegible liner notes, being attacked onstage during live performances, self- releasing records with 17 minute long title tracks; all part of the deal for the convoluted world of
Fucked Up.
What's worse?
"The band exists within a culture of confusion," says manager/producer
David Eliade, who additionally claims to have "Never attended a
Fucked Up live show." True intentions and motivation are concealed under Internet hearsay, the band's inability to communicate with the public and obscure, hard to find releases.
Fucked Up exist as a band, that much is known. But how, what and most importantly why continues to be a mystery. And if that's not fucked up enough, it gets even worse. People love
Fucked Up, and their loyal fans include
The Arcade Fire (
AF violinist Owen Pallet plays on several tracks off of
Hidden World),
Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, Bloc Party and
Vice Magazine (whom recently released a UK single for
Fucked Up). In addition, throngs of eager listeners have tattooed their bodies with the
Fucked Up logo, and many see no problem with paying outrageous amounts of money on
eBay for out-of- print
Fucked Up singles.
Somewhere amid the disparaging alienation, blatant offensiveness, and inter-band disillusionment,
Fucked Up transformed into a highly sought after, enigmatic and essentially unconventional institution. In March of 2006, the band agreed to release their first full length album, Hidden World, on
Jade Tree.
Hidden World is cloaked in shades of unconventional aesthetics, symbolic overtones and an "Are you with us or against us?" burst of urgency. The album marks a turning point for the band, transcending the boundaries of punk with melody, aggression, expansive structures and enigmatic diatribes on what lies underneath the immediate, visualized world. Lyrically,
Fucked Up continue to combine confrontational ideologies with deliberately skewed subject matter, producing a brutal yet alternative analysis on thought provocative punk.
Considering what we already know about
Fucked Up, it's a feat that the tracks contained on
Hidden World even made it out of the studio. Misunderstood revolutions are created and destroyed each day of our lives. With
Fucked Up playing the role of bridge builder, demolitionist and subsequent analyst, there's no telling where this revolution may take us.....
Some more facts about Fucked Up:Members:10,000 Marbles - Lead Guitar. Previously of
Ruination, Mike Haliechuk lives outside Toronto where he raises chickens.
Father Damian aka Pink Eyes - Vocals. Abraham works as a producer in the film industry under his birth name, which he has so far managed to keep secret so that his participation in
Fucked Up will not negatively affect his career.
Slumpy aka Laundry aka Mustard Gas - Bass Guitar. Occupation unknown.
Concentration Camp - Rhythm Guitar. Zucker is a transient who was chosen as the original frontman for
Fucked Up due to his confrontational manner. Zucker was replaced as frontman after missing several crucial shows while in jail for punching a Toronto police officer who had stolen a ham sandwich from him. In order to remain active in the band after the arrival of new singer Damian, Zucker learned guitar.
Guinea Beat aka Mr. Jo - Drums. Falco splits his time between
Fucked Up and
Career Suicide, as well as being a full time student. He has had to keep the existence of
Fucked Up a secret from his family, with whom he lives, after his father declared the band's name "...made him want to vomit."
David Eliade - Visuals, spiritual and political guidance. Eliade is the
"fifth Beatle" so to speak, and manages
Fucked Up from behind the scenes. He has designed their logo, records, and influenced most of their lyrics. Eliade has coordinated most of their interviews, except for those conducted live on the road. He has begun taking a more visible role, acting as management for the band of late and working with them in the studio on the production of their forthcoming LP. He is the one who taught Haliechuk to garden and Camp to hop trains. He is the only person involved with the band who knows how to tune a guitar. Unfortunately he has never attended one of
Fucked Up's live shows.
The band doesn't get along, they get into fights (literally), and the singer has not gone on tours before. He's the modern day
Darby Crash, and usually cuts his face just about every show with razorblades. He's got social anxiety disorder and Schizophrenia. The brainchild of the band Mike one of the guitar players (lead guitar) writes just about everything, has Asperbergers syndrome and is clinically depressed. The punk
Daniel Johnston if you will. He wants everyone to listen to this album in it's entirety but said he will never listen this album.
Together for five years,
Fucked Up has gotten big in the underground on their own, rarely opening for big bands. Their records sell for lots of $ on
eBay. Kids are fanatical and obsessed with them. They are an enigma, which could be why so many people are talking about them (and not just punk kids).
To date,
Fucked Up has released 10 7"s.
No Paseran (sold 1000, oop),
Police (sold 3500),
Baiting the Public (sold 1000, oop),
Dance Of Death (sold 3000) all came out on
Deranged.
Litany (sold 1500, oop) came out on Test Pattern. Generation (sold 2100, oop) came out on
Slasher. Split with
Haymaker (sold 1500, oop) came out on deep six, two European tour 7"s (sold 1000 each). Not to mention three 12"s.
LET LIKES BE CURED BY LIKES Live 12" (limited to 500 copies, oop) came out on
Schizophrenic Records. LOOKING FOR GOLD 12" (limited to 500 copies, oop) was self-released.
Generation 12" (sold 1500) came out on
Slasher Records, and one cd compilation of 7" songs (sold 5000) on
Deranged Records.
The band has toured Europe once and hit the UK in May, also 2 east coast tours and one west coast tour (mostly as the headlining band but did some dates w/
The Gossip).
Influences:
The Wipers, Ramones, Pink Floyd, Negative Approach, The Who “but at the base we are most influenced by ourselves.”
They don't have a website or Myspace page. Myspace page is a fake one done by a fan.
Photo diary of their recent UK tour:http://www.viceland.com/viceDiary/photos/London-%20Fucked%20Up/Illustration on
“Hidden World” is influenced by the
"Meddle" period
Pink FloydThe band has sold almost 30,000 records now without having put out a full length yet. the
Dangerous Fumes 7" that’s coming out this summer has a US pressing, a euro pressing, a Spanish pressing, we're doing an Israel-only record at some point....not to mention a single on Vice Records and a
Blocks 12" (blocksblocksblocks.com) - that’s the label that does all the
Final Fantasy records which is the side project band for the violinist in Arcade Fire and the same guy that played on hidden world....
More about the band and the album from Mike (Brainchild):Alchemical Tradition -Throughout history symbols and signifiers have been used as part of an undercurrent of change and evolution. The alchemical belief was that god had design the universe according to a plan, and that magic forces rule the natural word. Alchemists sought to control these forces that guided nature and controlled people’s lives, in order to more finely tune nature, sciences, humanity. Rather than creating gold, which was the symbol, they sought to use transformative powers to allow humans to transcend their "base" nature, and be elevated to the divinity of the gods. Alchemy is magic to make better people.
Looking for Gold - FU became what we are today after releasing this 12", which is referential to the alchemical tradition. It asked "Are you the fire or are you the flame?" - which meant "are you base, or do you transcend", or rather, that age old punk maxim, are you with us or against us. This is the point in the history of our band where we started looking to make divisions and influences the way people think, rather than simply what they think.
A big part of our symbolism is making divisions between groups of people, the classic initiated vs. uninitiated dichotomy, which is used by religions groups, political groups, social orgs, etc. We released that "secret 7" that you had to be close friends with the band in order to get, we do secret shows that are hard to find out about, and put lots of hidden messages and symbolism in our releases, act brash and stand-offish, to create a sense of belonging and exclusion at the same time. The point is that if you are on the outside, and are interested in the band, you want to try and do what you can do get on the inside. In a minor sense, this is part of that tradition of having people transcend who they are to become different or better. We've put out a lot of Sigils to this effect also, to concretely have people change they way they are and congregate around the band. A sigil is a simple magic "spell" that involves creating a wish and outcome, writing it down and then committing it to a small symbol.
Which brings us to the Magick Tradition Sigils were thought to original from Hatian Voodoo, and were popularized around the turn of last century in the western world by Austin Osman Spare, an artist. Sigils and ritual magic made its way through the occultist circles through the 20th century by way of people like Alister Crowley and the like, and wound up in the contemporary urban magick tradition that also includes lame shit like wicca, yoga, astrology. I got into it because Grant Morrison discussed it a lot in the groundbreaking comic series The Invisibles, which is a fictional amalgam of basically every cool idea and philosophy ever created by any subculture in the last 300 or 3000 years from egyptian goddesses to the buzzcocks and situationism. I put sigils in the records a) because they often actually work and b) because they create a sense of mystery behind the band. Which brings us to
Logo and SymbologyWe have a prominent circle F logo featured on every release we've done, most of the show posters I’ve ever seen, tattooed on 10 or 15 people’s bodies, etc.
The Tradition of FascismMe and Damian got obsessed with Nazis and fascism a few years ago and realized by way of bands like Death In June and zines like Answer Me that you can effectively mix progressive and subcultural politics with a healthy bit of fascist aesthetics and ideology and come up with a pretty flashy result. i think the first time we used this sort of thing was on the Toronto Omnibus comp 12" where our page of the layout just had 15 German toddlers seig heiling and was captioned "All We Need is the Right Leader", and then we put a picture of Hitler on the split 7" with Haymaker. The trick here is to use juxtaposition. Hitler on the cover of a screwdriver record wouldn't turn any heads, but mixing fascist imagery with a leftist anarchist punk band is like a bomb going off. I’m not sure how it happened but for like 2 years after those two records came out "fucked up are Nazis" was a commonly used phrase (on the internet, and it was more a reference to other situations rather than being an actual accusation), but regardless again it got people talking. Which wasn't even the point this time, the reason i designed with that sort of imagery was to make the point that following leadership and ideology often had dire consequences (i.e. Nazism) regardless of the particulars. We tried to fan the flames by denying it on the radio, but writing fake letters to MRR accusing ourselves of being a racist band.
Soul Music aestheticsWhen we started putting records out all the 7"s you saw in distro boxes were 10 songers with skateboarders on the cover. I listened to mostly 77 UK punk and soul when we started the band and decided we would release our music 2 songs at a time on singles that had cool and old looking label artwork. people didn't really know what to think and some distros initially refused to carry our records because they were "too short" or a "waste of vinyl". anyhow, if you say we are a "soul influenced punk band" it might be lame, but that¹s why we did singles. also because of UK bands and Dangerhouse records
Dangerhouse RecordsThis comparison came up a little too often for my liking, but the first reference people came up with to describe the singles was this late 70s LA record label. this era and time was arguably the most productive and creative era in north American punk, and we all liked these bands to shit. we sort of copped the
Dangerhouse style when designing the first few singles, but not as much as everyone said we did.
Anarchism/situationismFirst off, don't mentioned situationism in anything you write about us. its really played and has no intellectual currency anymore. It’s still really cool. just in case, it was a proto-political movement that took place in France in the late 50s and 60s as a reference to the several attempted revolutions that were taking place in Europe in the 50s (i.e. in Hungary in 1956). basically a bunch of well off Parisian university students decided to become artistic revolutionaries that influenced the next 50 years of art, architecture and created the entire punk ideology (by way of
Malcolm Maclaren copying it rote to create the
Sex Pistols). situationism was a really dangerous and interesting way of looking at the world and was partly a student’s critique of art and communism and evolved quickly into a deconstruction of the entire modern culture and still has a lot of appeal today. it was real cool and we used to use situationist terms in our lyrics. also me and josh were young anarchist dudes. we have both been arrested several times and used to do bad shit, especially Josh, who hangs out exclusively with natives or bad dudes, this is not bullshit. The
"No Pasaran" single was entirely devoted to talking about the anarchist revolution in Spain in 1936, probably the coolest part of the last 500 years of human history.
Viennese Actionistsif you've ever read and
FU interview you've heard of the actionists who were a crazed group of individuals in 1960s era Austria. they did weird art shows were they would flay goats alive and fuck in front of people and shit that would blow minds in the 60s. they invented a fake culture called "zock" and basically mangled mainstream culture and sent people crying out of their shows. this goes back to the whole "shock and awe" thing i was talking about before. This is where
Baiting the Public comes from, which we mangled the lyrics too, split the song over 2 sides of a record, basically tried to piss people off in as many ways we could think of to piss people off with a record. sprouting from this tradition and also the situationist thing were crazed groups in the US like the symbionese liberation front, the Red Army Faction in Germany who were fucked up students who started murdering cops basically for fun, and other similar groups in Italy. basically if there are people doing insane things either for no good reason, or some convoluted ideological reason, we are influenced by that.
DepressionNone of us really have any friends and aren't social and don't hang out. the thing about us always fighting is really true and we don't like being together or with other people for extended periods of time. Damian is on meds a lot and is diagnosed with schizophrenia. Josh and I have been depressed and aimlessly pissed off for good parts of our adult lives.
Triumph of LifeThe latest ideological move forward with this band was triumph of life, super long lyrics, real detailed, etc. its about two opposing forces clashing and going to war with each other and in the process, both becoming stronger. like when a cheetah and a gazelle go through history locked in this perpetual evolutionary battle, they co-evolve each other and even though they are predator/prey, this relationship has made them both faster runners, with stronger muscles, etc. this is an interesting metaphor in that the strife that fills everyone’s life is an opportunity to make things better and enable people to transcend what they are. It follows the points we made in
"looking for gold" and also allowed me to basically say "war is cool" it today's war-filed political climate and disguise this sentiment behind a pretty picture of a bird on the cover of the record (which, by the way symbolizes this evolution by showing a bird who has evolved its beak to fit into flowers which continually evolve to keep the beak out).
EvolutionI am an environmental studies major university graduate and like nature a lot. most of the lyrics i wrote in
Hidden World have to do with nature in some way; mostly by taking biological concepts and turning them into metaphors about social issues (i.e. triumph of life).
Darwinian Evolution as a concept can pretty much explain everything about
FU that is interesting.
Metaphorwe don't have outright "political" lyrics. I’ve always thought instead of telling people WHAT to think, we try to tell them HOW to think, and to do this we enlist metaphors. all our lyrics have surface meaning, but then use that surface meaning to be a metaphor about something that is more applicable.
"Dance of Death" uses an age-old metaphor about the dance of death, which was usually done in pictures to describe things that were dangerous/sinful that would lead someone to temptation and ultimately hell. the lyrics in the song are about rotten people doing rotten things. the metaphor is supposed to be describing the modern culture of excess and sickness, people smoking, eating junk food, etc, and doing it because they love doing it. i.e. the dance of death.
Hidden WorldWhich brings us up to today.
Hidden World as a concept tries to bring everything I’ve just described under its wing. officially it started when i was reading
E O Wilson nature books that described Amazon flora and fauna, and how the closer you look the more you can see, i.e. a tree, then an ant colony living at the base, then smaller plants, then microbe colonies, then bacteria, and the point is the closer you look the more massive things become. on one ant there will be a million bacteria, etc. its supposed to encompass everything we've involved in various subcultures essentially, that the things we do are hidden from mainstream life, but they carry a lot more weight and value than the things you can see on the surface.
DualityThe imagery on the LP is supposed to represent duality. the two circles - we put a quote on a record once that said "let them fight to the death and we'll live on their graves" - that sums up what we're about. let opposing forces fight each other, and we won't get involved, we'll just live in between. two circles oppose each other, we go in between. The hidden world is what’s left when you ignore left and right, black and white and try to see what’s in between both sides. originally its an alchemical symbol - the two circles represent heaven and hell, which are at constant war for the middle ground, which is earth. the cover art does this too - a Satan/god, man/woman figure casts away two opposing seas of snakes to reveal a safe path through the middle influenced by neither side.
FU as a band has always tried to ignore what else is going on around it and be self referential and not influenced by either side of something. in the clash between two opposing forces, the hidden world is what’s left over when they destroy each other.
"Hidden World" was recorded at the same studio
Avril Lavigne records at with Jon Drew (
Brutal Knights, Career Suicide, Magneta Lane)
“Hidden World” is the band's first studio album
Tracklisting for Hidden World:
1) Crusades
2) David Comes To Life
3) Invisible Leader
4) Carried Out To The Sea
5) Baiting The Public
6) Fate of Fates
7) Two Snakes
8) Hidden World
9) Manqueller Man
10) Blaze Of Glory
11) Triumph of Life
12) Jacobs Ladder
13) Vivian Girls
For more information, visit:http://everything2.org/index.pl?node_id=1810056
http://lookingforgold.blogspot.com
http://jadetree.com/bands/artist/fucked_up
The Exquisite Death of Saxon Shore is the culmination of a year of collaborative recording and member bolstering that also yielded the previous cdep, Luck Will Not Save Us from a Jackpot of Nothing, at the halfway mark in the spring of 2005. The Exquisite Death of Saxon Shore is characterized by Saxon Shore's lush, intense, melodic brand of instrumental rock. The full-length is a vibrant mix of electronics and acoustic instruments, from the white label 12" sounds of "Marked with Knowledge" to the metallic refrains of "Isolated by the Secret of Your Fellow Men " to the pop sensibilities and hooks of "With a Red Suit You Will Become a Man," all filtered through the expert and artful ears of engineer, producer, and mixer Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Sleater Kinney). Through 10 songs, Saxon Shore explore the story of their own hypothetical death complete with a moment of silence to close the album. Their allegory of life and death is depicted through artwork from Philadelphia artist Ben Volta who collaborated with the band through the year long recording process of the ep and full-length. Volta developed his fleshlog painting motif colored through The Exquisite Death filter. The Exquisite Death of Saxon Shore exhibits the reincarnated, resurrected, resuscitated spirit of the band.
TOUR DATES
THE NEW ALBUM
Southern California metalheads lost a golden opportunity for Satan worship when Tom Araya’s gallbladder surgery forced Slayer to postpone their 6/6/06 gig in San Diego. Thankfully the good folks at OvrCast, a locally held music and art promotions collective, have stepped in to put together a disquietingly good Devil’s Day lineup of underground metal and noise acts unlikely to assemble more than once per century. A free concert by doom-mongers High on Fire (fronted by ex-Sleep guitarist Matt Pike) should be enough to get the heshers to order their mutton to go, but throw in the menacing experi-metal quartet Oxbow, some top shelf neo-thrash from Saviours, Nachtmystium’s retro black metal attack, the monolithic riffs of Zoroaster and the heavy post-hardcore sounds of Austin’s Lions of Tsavo, and this festival becomes unmissable. For those of you more apt to sport turtlenecks and furrowed brows than leather and devil horns, the ear-bleeding noise duo Bastard Noise (with ex-members of Man is the Bastard) and the more brooding formlessness of Gregg Kowalsky and Everlovely Lightningheart will certainly appeal. Wires on Fire and Boy Jazz operate somewhere closer to the middle of the noise/metal continuum—the OvrCast Festival truly has something for everyone. Relapse Records and Hydra Head will be in the house, along with info booths from various charities and vendors. And with admission set at zero dollars, you won’t feel bad leaving if the stench becomes overpowering. (ER)