Fucked Up
Year of the Pig
What’s Your Rupture? (2007)
As if Fucked Up weren’t ridiculous enough already – a hardcore punk band that writes songs typically over the four minute mark that feature backing choirs, mandolin, violin from that Arcade Fire/Final Fantasy dude, and extended jam-oriented break downs – now they’ve gone and dropped a 2 song 12 inch. That’s right, a 2 song 12 inch. How many hardcore bands do you know that could fill up 12 inches of vinyl with just 2 songs? That’s what I thought.
Side A of Year of the Pig features the title track, another song that pushes the limits of just what is kosher for hardcore bands to do in a recording studio. See this behemoth of a track clocks in at 18 minutes and doesn’t exactly follow any sort of hardcore framework. It starts with just clean guitar and humming organ before moving into a bouncy bass line, shuffling beat, piano accents, and soft female vocals. Yep, you heard right, Pink Eyes doesn’t even spill his massive grunts onto this thing until 2 minutes in. Eventually all fucking hell breaks loose, but it’s made that much more chaotic and cathartic thanks to the song’s extensive downtime.
On the flipside you’ll find something a bit more “Fucked Up” sounding with “Black Hats.” Here you get the band’s garage guitar tones, relentless throttle, and bellowed vocal lines. There is no reprieve on Side B, just pure unadulterated frenzy, and well it sounds just good as the experimental shit.
For those of you keeping score, Fucked Up just threw up another middle finger to hardcore convention, so add another notch.
-Matt Whelihan
Posted under Hometown
This post was written by MyFriendCleveland on November 14, 2007
