Fucked Up
The Chemistry Of Common Life

Sometimes I am quite happy to have lived long enough to witness live the release of albums that are now legendary. As well as the birth of bands and genres that set trends like punk, hardcore, and grunge. To have seen Uncle Frankie in a fuchsia pullover conducting the band, Jeffrey Lee Pierce speeding up the tempo to make half the audience flee, Iggy throwing himself off the stage drenched in sweat and risking not being caught by the blockheads in the front row.

Sometimes. Because in other situations I wish I were twenty years younger to fully enjoy records like this one by the Canadian band Fucked Up.

Hardcore in 2008? Then I would dive into the mosh pit without the mixed fear and awareness that this is yet another mainstream band that differentiates itself from the rest only by the growl singing of frontman Pink Eyes. A big bald man who gets agitated on stage half-naked with jeans destined to fall down beyond his fat buttocks... journalists are quick to mention GG Allin, but I bet they have no idea about the craziness of that public enemy number one.

Fucked Up, on the other hand, make me tender, with that bassist who seems to me like Ugly Betty with a bit of extra chubbiness. With that video promoting the frenzied "Black Albino Bones" that ironically captures them motionless at the street corner for its entire duration. With an instrumental track of ambient quality like "Golden Seal" that makes us realize that after all, this is indeed the land of GYBE! With an improvised gig in a clothing store along with Moby covering the sacred Ramones. With those improbable nicknames like 10,000 Marbles, Concentration Camp, Mustard Gas, Guinea Beat, that clash with their boyish faces. With their participation in MTV Live from a public restroom while they were inside and the fans outside were breaking everything. With their name censored by a bleep when presented on television or hidden under some @&# if printed in the New York Times.

But are Fucked Up a hardcore band? Surely you wouldn’t expect them to play like fellow countrymen DOA or the Subhumans approximately thirty years ago, would you? Then the punk violence of tracks like "Son of Father", "Twice Born" or the stunning "Crooked Head" seem to filter the lesson of the Asheton brothers in rhythmically constructing a song, and instead "No Ephiphany" would be even something sweet without Pink Eyes' growl and with all those overlapping synthetic effects on the basic riff. "Royal Swan" with the syncopated duet between apocalyptic voice/angelic voice and the aforementioned instrumental "Golden Seal" make you think you've chosen the wrong record while "Black Albino Bones" suddenly makes everything clear! In the end, these too are nothing but confused grandkids of that masterful shift from hardcore to pop by those two bastards Mould and Hart.

And then their attitudes also become clear, swaying between the anarchic sympathies of their first single in 2002 "No pasarán" and the allusions to Nazism like the cover images of the double album "Hidden World", as well as the guitar overdubs, violins, flutes, and synthesizers that peek here and there throughout the eleven tracks. Today we are all children of the same confusion, the kind that drives me to dive into the mosh pit to the sound of their music.