#401 Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life

Loved David Comes to Life, figured I'd check out its predecessor.

Man, what an interesting progression between these two albums. Where David Comes to Life was single-mindedly relentless, this album is by comparison much bigger, much more ambitious, more varied and wild and wooly. It's pretty great.

Obviously there's plenty of Pink Eyes's gutteral shouting, and underneath the kind of pretty, noisy guitar work you'd expect given DCtL, but here things are monsterously ambitious for a band that sounds, at first blush, like such a blunt instrument. The arc of the album is a rant against God and religion and the wall of disillusionment that clever kids raised Christian seem to hit. Or something, after a listen or two, I can't say I've caught every throat-propelled syllable, but there's plenty of rage, spitting disdain, and furious disappointment directed generally skyward.

The variety of the songs is pretty amazing here too. The whole epic kicks off with a flute solo, and later sprightly congas, three-and-a-half-minute ambient pieces, and electronic beebles take their turns putting odd angles on the juggernaut's lapel. The backing vocals are great flourishes too, from chanting, to pretty-girls-make-graves-style shrieking, to the chiming indie gorgeous of album highlight Black Albino Bones.

Its kind of backwards. You'd expect the straightforward relentless beating album to come out first, followed by the extravagant, adventurous epic. But Fucked Up has actually gotten less and less adventurous as time has gone on. In this case, I don't know that David Comes to Life represents a regression so much as it represents a honing of the craft, a lessened reliance on gimmicks and the nerve to actually do something harder, longer, and more focused. If DCtL was hardcore, endless krautrock (do a shot), this album is swerving hardcore prog: both albums are daring, both are challenging, both are strange conflations of brute force and laser precision. Taken outside of the continuum of the band's history, they stand as epic companion pieces, taking on huge themes in a huge way 4.5/5

You might like this if: you like hard punk guitars and caveman shouting, but also like pretty guitars, complex structures and epic themes. The center of that venn diagram doesn't describe many people I know, but if you fit the bill, don't miss this one.