Fucked Up – David Comes To Life

Fucked Up are a hardcore band designed specifically to be provocative. Look at their band name and you can see it as clear as day. Yet, despite their intention to shock the listener, the Toronto band aren’t using mere gimmickry to sell themselves. No, these guys know what they’re doing. They won the Polaris prize for the best Canadian full length album based on artistic merit in 2009. They recorded a guest-heavy Christmas single for Do They Know Its Christmas. They supposedly (I have yet to see them live) put on a hectic and memorable live show. They sued Rolling Stone and Camel Cigarettes for the misuse of their name. They utterly destroyed the MTV Bathroom when they asked them to perform live. In short, they are the punkest of punk bands. They do what they want and yet don’t try to just ride that wave of notoriety with them. Instead, as their Polaris prize winning status indicates, Fucked Up writes songs worthy of merit all the while staying rooted in the hardcore scene.

David Comes To Life is the accumulation of that. A nearly eighty-minute, eighteen song concept album that pushes every boundary imaginable.

First there’s the concept itself – a convoluted love story between David and Veronica that is nearly impossible to follow. It’s a story of love, adventure, destruction and despair. Characters come in and out, there’s some sort of end of the world catastrophe that kills Veronica sending David into a pit of despair and in the end even the band admits they have no idea what truly happens. So while it is a concept album at its core, the way it is done enables each song to stand on its own. You can pick apart each individual track and will always be impressed by the narrative output.

But even though the lyrical storyline is noteworthy, it is only one in a long line of attractions for this album. The main allure of the album comes from the band’s inventive take on the hardcore genre as they’ve delivered what could quite possibly end up being this decade’s The Shape of Punk To Come. Just like Refused, Fucked Up have pushed the boundaries of hardcore here by delivering a tight, cohesive hardcore album that tethers on the edge of post-hardcore. There are layers upon layers of intricate guitar work, creating a noisy wall of melody. It’s tense and blistering, with shoegazing extravagance and grandiose ambitions that they’re, somehow, able to fulfill. Damian Abrahams, or Pink Eyes, sings overtop yet low in the mix with a few guitar lines placed above his harsh yell. His vocals are unlike any other in the scene and don’t quite fit with the delicate musicianship that surrounds him. Yet his passionate yells round off the sound, pushing forward the sense of urgency and when they contrast his fiery scream with the melodic female vocals from Madeline Follin of Cults or Jennifer Castle, they’re able to stop the listener in their place (see the awe-inspiring single Queen of Hearts to understand).

David Comes To Life is the closet thing to The Shape of Punk To Come we’ve had in years. It’s a hardcore album that breaks all the rules and succeeds because of it. At seventy-eight minutes, it can be long; but there are times when that just adds to the overall persona of the album.