Fucked Up’s now classic 2008 album "The Chemistry Of Common Life" synthesizes numerous diverse impulses into an expansive epic about the mysteries of birth, death, and the origins of life (and re-living). Merging elements of hardcore songwriting with up to 70 tracks of guitars, organs, winds and vocals, (including 18 guitars on the first single, the fatalistic “No Epiphany”), the music remains iconoclastic and startling, with Pink Eyes’ vocals front and center. Guest musicians, of course, abound, notably gorgeous voices such as Brooklyn’s Vivian Girls and Toronto’s Katie Stelmanis.

TRACK LISTING

1. Son The Father
2. Magic Word
3. Golden Seal
4. Days Of Last
5. Crooked Head
6. No Epiphany
7. The Peaceable Kingdom
8. Black Albino Bones
9. Royal Swan
10. Twice Born
11. Looking For God
12. The Chemistry Of Common Life

With One Day, Fucked Up have delivered one of the most energizing and intricate albums of their career, a massive-sounding record that arrives in deceptively small confines. The Canadian hardcore legends have been known for their epic scale in the past, so it might be a surprise that Fucked Up’s sixth studio album is their shortest to date, written and recorded in the confines of one literal day (hence the title). Don’t mistake size for substance, though: The band’s sound has only gotten bigger, more hard-charging, with even denser thickets of melody.

“I wanted to see what I could record in literally one day.” That singular idea came to mind for guitarist Mike Haliechuk in the closing months of 2019. Haliechuk got himself into a studio and proceeded to write and record the record’s ten tracks over three eight-hour sessions, reconnecting with the core the band’s songwriting essence in the process.

Initially, Fucked Up vocalist Damian Abraham was also set to complete his vocals in similar fashion—that is, before the lockdowns of 2020 took place. As it turns out, the isolation yielded creative dividends, as Abraham returned to contributing lyrics as well for the first time since 2014’s Glass Boys. “It almost felt like it might be the last time I’d ever get to record vocals for anything,” Abraham says of the stakes he felt while putting his part to tape, before reflecting on how he approached the lyrical process: “What do I want to say to friends who aren’t here anymore? What do I want to say to myself?”

Over swarms of tuneful noise that evoke Sonic Youth circa Daydream Nation, Abraham lets loose on gentrification in “Lords of Kensington,” which was inspired by an “incredible” Toronto neighborhood that was regularly subject to life-ruining police surveillance and structural violence. “The police chief during that era he just opened a cannabis store,” Abraham explains. “It’s so cynical and gross, what society has come to but by being in a band, we’re culpable in changing the neighborhood, too, since the punk spaces and cool happenings that pop up are part of gentrification. Are you building a culture? Or are you ruining something that’s already been there?”

Then there’s the dusky burn of “Cicada,” a sonic cousin to Dose Your Dreams’ excellent standout “The One I Want Will Come for Me” that features Haliechuk taking lead-vocal duty. The song is dedicated to lost friends, and in his words, it’s about “what life is like after you lose people, and our responsibility to carry them forward into the future, using the things they taught us as a light. I like to imagine the sound of cicadas as a metaphor for our strange life in the subculture we all just live these weird little hidden lives under the dirt, and then once in a generation, one of us gets to bust out of the dirt and intone their song so loud that it can be heard allover.”

One Day is an undeniable work of confidence from a band that continues to operate at the top of their game, making music that’s guaranteed to last a lifetime and beyond.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Never a band to rest on their laurels, Fucked Up have been constantly moving and shifting their focus for a good couple decades now, and 'One Day' sees them turning back to the solid foundation of melodic hardcore and scathing percussive blasts. There are definitely echoes here of the post-hardcore luminaries of the early 00's (Hot Water Music, Icarus Line etc) but with Fucked Up's singular stylistic focus.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Found
2. I Think I Might Be Weird
3. Huge New Her
4. Lords Of Kensington
5. Broken Little Boys
SIDE B
6. Nothing’s Immortal
7. Falling Right Under
8. One Day
9. Cicada
10. Roar

Recorded over 6 months by Jon Drew at Giant Studios in Toronto, Year of the Ox is the band's fourth record in the continuing 12-year cycle and adds to its evolving retinue of guest musicians. The patient and building Year of the Ox features Nika Rosa Danilova of Zola Jesus for a guest vocal passage and Toronto's string quartet, New Strings Old Puppets. B-side "Solomon's Song," a gothic vampire love tribute to Twilight, features a 5-minute saxophone solo from Aerin Fogel of the Bitters and heavy synthing from Trust.

TRACK LISTING

A Year Of The Ox (13:00)
B Solomon's Song (11:50). 

A nine-track compilation gathering David era-appropriate rarities and B-sides, all of which were previously available only on 7”.

TRACK LISTING

1. Queen Of Hearts (Demo)
2. What Would You Do
3. Do All Words Can Do
4. Into The Light
5. Byrdsdale Garden City
6. What They Didn't Know
7. The Truest Road
8. Remember Me
9. Octavio Made The Bomb

In 2011, Toronto’s Fucked Up delivered an album that chafed the edges of punk rock’s conceptual boundaries –a set of songs that splayed freely into unexpected instrumentation, psychedelic drift, and situationist philosophy. Its ambition was limitless and its run time opulent.

Which is to say, they made a concept album.

On December 10th, Matador Records will celebrate the 10th anniversary of Fucked Up’s titanic 78-minute early ’10s masterpiece, David Comes to Life, with a limited-edition 2xLP reissue on lightbulb-yellow vinyl.

David Comes To Life is a story of lost love, global meltdown, depression, bombs, guilt and madness. Or is it? A modern-day morality tale set amid the dour backdrop of a British industrial town in the late ’70s, it’s a four-part play that follows the dark moods and inner psyche of the titular hero. At the same time, the reliability of the narrator gets called into question. The tables are turned, responsibility shifts, and the story goes meta. Of course,you could always ignore the backstory and just listen to a fiercely imaginative double album of blistering, melodic rock'n'roll shot through with all manner of psychic weirdness.

TRACK LISTING

1. Let Her Rest
2. Queen Of Hearts
3. Under My Nose
4. The Other Shoe
5. Turn The Season
6. Running On Nothing
7. Remember My Name
8. A Slanted Tone
9. Serve Me Right
10. Truth I Know
11. Life In Paper
12. Ship Of Fools
13. A Little Death
14. I Was There
15. Inside A Frame
16. The Recursive Girl
17. One More Night
18. Lights Go Up

D.O.A., Canada’s punk pioneers know when to take a stand against bullshit. So that’s why they have come up with their new instant single Fucked Up Donald. Joey Shithead, the godfather of hardcore recently said "It did not take too long to realize that Donald Trump, with his anti-Mexican, anti-women, antipeople message was just too much. You can dress a pig up, but in the end you realize it’s really just Donald Trump".

So D.O.A. arranged a quick recording session. It’s a vitriolic take off of a big part of D.O.A’s history from the 80’s. The now released video has 3 million hits and counting.

Fucked Up are a punk band. They were a punk band when they started in Toronto more than a decade ago and they’ve remained a punk band even as they’ve ascended to career heights that their younger selves never could’ve imagined. But how do you remain a punk band when you’re on magazine covers, or sharing stadium stages with the Foo Fighters? How do you stay true to your 15-year-old self when you’ve got a career to maintain and families to support? Those are the questions that Fucked Up asks on ‘Glass Boys’ and they ask those questions in the form of a blazing, titanic, ultimately triumphant rock album. 

The last two Fucked Up albums were sweeping, defining, monolithic gestures. On 2008’s ‘The Chemistry Of Common Life’ they tested hardcore’s capacity for stylistic innovation, for seven-minute songs and unconventional arrangements and they won Canada’s prestigious Polaris Music Prize in the process. With 2011’s ‘David Comes To Life’ they offered up a full-blown rock opera, coming with one larger-than-life hook after another and that made them even bigger and further away from the Toronto hardcore scene that nurtured them. ‘Glass Boys’ isn’t a retrenchment or a back-tobasics move - it’s too ambitious and complex for that - but after those last two albums it’s tight and concise and direct, an album of real and direct sentiment rather than artifice. 

Musically, ‘Glass Boys’ carries echoes of some of the more ragged and adventurous bands from America’s punk past (Husker Du, Dinosaur Jr.) but it also has some of the anthemic charge of The Who and the guttural intensity of Negative Approach. Singer Damian Abraham still growls like a demon but he’s found more range and depth in his bark. Drummer Jonah Falco does something innovative on the album, adding two separate drum tracks, one of them in half-time, adding a psychedelic, disorienting feel. 

The triple-guitar battalion of Mike Haliechuk, Ben Cook and Josh Zucker still builds symphonies out of feedback and powerchords but this time around there’s less emphasis on world-crushing riffs and more on world-creating textures. Bassist Sandy Miranda is now even more a part of that storm, her instrument blurring in with that overwhelming guitar roar. 

If the album’s lyrics concern the quest to stay true to your younger self, the music pulls off the trick beautifully. ‘Echo Boomer’, like ‘Son The Father’ and ‘Let Her Rest’ before it, makes for a powerful album opener, a surge of catharsis that gives a strong idea of what's to come. ‘Sun Glass’ builds from acoustic strumming to bleary pummel and stays pretty the whole time. ‘DET’ has one of those world-annihilating choruses that demands a full-room singalong and the album-closing title track is a blast of epic catharsis as grand and forceful as anything this band has ever done. After two monumental concept-driven concept albums, Fucked Up have made another heartexpanding, life-affirming piece of work, and this time, they’ve done it by shooting straight from the heart. 

TRACK LISTING

Echo Boomer
Touch Stone
Sun Glass
The Art Of Patrons
Warm Change
Paper The House
DET
Led By Hand
The Great Divide
Glass Boys

The rock opera: the final word in decadent capitalist-pig rock. The kind of tediously long, navel-gazing fodder from which faded rock dictators cling onto power by their filthy fingernails. Breaking with rank unsurprisingly, then, come Fucked Up, one of the most vital punk bands around and people who aren’t scared of a challenge.

Following up their Polaris Prize winning breakthrough, ‘The Chemistry Of Common Life’, their third album ‘David Comes To Life’ is no less monumental. Split across four acts, it sees increased female vocals work in perfect contrast to Damian Abraham's wounded bull growl. The band, meanwhile, provide more space for the flourishes and imaginative song-writing that entwine their love of fey British indie pop with heavy riffing, amidst some genuinely twisted turns. Perhaps most grippingly, the triple-guitar interplay between Mike Haliechuk, Josh Zucker and Ben Cook has risen to symphonic levels. Together, they channel the energy of musicians ranging from Angus Young, Pete Townshend and Noel Gallagher, to Bob Stinson and Lyle Preslar, displaying a consummate ease and ferocity.

Then there comes the story that ties it together: ‘David Comes To Life’ appears to be a parable of lost love, global meltdown, depression, war, guilt and madness. Or is it? A modern day morality tale set to the dour backdrop of a British industrial town in the late 70s, the narrative follows the dark moods and inner psyche of its titular hero. At the same time, the reliability of the narrator is called into question, the tables are turned, responsibility shifts, and the story takes on a meta twist. It’s a fantastically complex concept that somehow works as a coherent narrative, while the mind-altering subject matter sits perfectly with the intense music.

Of course, you could always ignore the back-story and instead listen to a fiercely imaginative, powerful 78 minutes of blistering, melodic rock ‘n’ roll, crossed with all manners of psychic weirdness.