Record Review: Fucked Up - Year Of The Ox

FUCKED UP
Year of the Ox
Merge Records, 2010

We all know bands grow up, but it’s usually into whiny commercial whores. That’s why it’s so great to watch Fucked Up somehow, with increasing severity, undercut punk’s simplistic ethos with every release. Indeed, they do it again on their latest, Year Of The Ox, the fourth instalment in a Zodiac themed singles line which has led the band in some of their most audibly absurd travels. And on a whole, at times completely off the cusp in any sense of hardcore punk, Fucked Up’s past five years, since their debut full-length record Hidden World and acclaimed follow-up The Chemistry of Common Life, showcases a band with an itching experimental side waiting to let loose.

On Ox, title track “Year Of The Ox” opens with an eerie violin and cello build-up, donated by Toronto orchestra ensemble New Strings Old Puppets, foreshadowing the song’s bass line and classical elements. Tension rises for just over a minute before the band kicks in. Damian Abraham immediately spits out his bludgeoning vocals in time with the guitar section’s stomping yet gentle hook that prevails as the thirteen minute song’s main riff.

A slight change in that hook switches up progression five minutes in. When the formula returns after a quick bridge, Abraham’s throat lashings assume an authoritative air while New Strings returns for an epic orchestral bridge. The guitar takes a backseat to elevating classical monstrosity reminiscent of Hidden World opener “Crusades” but with much more drawn out ampleness. Zola Jesus’s Nika Rosa Danilova dawns her voice in the latter half of the tune, offering mystical vocal swells amidst the now grittily palm muted guitar line.

“Ox” mixes the grandiose with the gutter, making it easy to wonder if Abraham would for once stop wrenching his guts, then Fucked Up would have to be labelled something other than punk or hardcore. What's punk about classically epic? Perhaps a question never to be answered by the troupe, but this song’s rule bending consciousness displays how punk doesn’t always have to laugh at itself, and can be seriously measured for all signs of integrity. Fucked Up proves punk is real music, even an academy-trained ear can recognise that.

The single’s B-side is another eye opener. Unlike previous Year Of’s backed with a couple two-minute punk standards, Ox flips over to the twelve minute “Solomon’s Song” uniquely featuring a saxophone line by Aerin Fogel of the Bitters. The bluesy intro leads to another low-mid tempo drum beat while a high-pitch guitar lead cycles over distant power chords. The song gets trippy as psychedelic delay effects are laid on the guitars during the choruses. When Abraham rests during the many, almost unnoticed bridges, the band is a marvel. Sandy wraths the bass strings offering low pitch punches; spacey bell rings and tremolo feedback jet out from hidden crevices; and Fogel wails on the sax for a broad five-minute outro.

Ox is monumental in mapping the evolution of Fucked Up from being an abrasive streetcore band to the scene’s forerunning innovators. Long time fans know they’re still thrashing and crashing, but to an obviously more intricate, grown-up style.

Published by This Literary Magazine

CanLit Award Predictions

CanLit awards season is heading into its last few weeks (our big three prizes will all be handed out by mid-November). Thus, it’s time for predictions, and, if you are a real lit-junkie, some serious bets. First, a few quiet observations.

What everyone is perhaps not so quietly talking about is Kathleen Winter’s triple nominations for the Giller Prize, Governor General’s Award and Writers’ Trust prize for her novel Annabel. It is Winter’s debut novel after her 2008 Winterset Award winning short story collection boYs.



Feeling two-thirds the heat as Kathleen Winter is Emma Donoghue, up for the Writers’ Trust and GG for her novel Room. The novel was also short-listed for the Man Booker earlier this fall.

There are lesser hopefuls that may surprise Canada with a big win after all. David Bergen’s new novel The Matter With Morris has had its share of recognition this season. It is up for the Giller and may just take the cake out of Winter’s mouth.

That said, it would be doggishly ironic if Sarah Selecky’s This Cake Is For The Party won the Giller. It is her debut work and has created considerable buzz in critic’s circles. Perhaps if the GG and Writer’s Trust accepted story collections, it would also approach taking those awards.

On to my predictions: be warned, the following is purely unfounded speculation.

On November 2, Michael Winter’s The Death Of Donna Whalen will win the Writers’ Trust award for fiction. In non-fiction, Sarah Leavitt will win for her graphic memoir Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me.

A week later on November 9, Emma Donoghue will win the Giller Prize for Room.

And in mid-November the Governor General’s Award for fiction will be presented to Kathleen Winter for Annabel. In non-fiction, Allan Casey will win for Lakeland: Journeys into the Soul of Canada.

Published by This Literary Magazine

Album Review: Pantera - Cowboys From Hell 20th Anniversary

Pantera
Cowboys From Hell 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
4.5/5

Listen To: Domination (Alive and Hostile EP)
Skip It: Nothing.

For any old school metalhead, Pantera's mainstream breakthrough, Cowboys From Hell, has some sort of nostalgia tied to it. Upon its release in 1990 Pantera, who had previously been known as Pantera's Metal Magic and strut to a glammier kind of metal, received mass recognition for their reworked sound. Without getting into the politics of who started what first - Cowboys From Hell is deemed by most as the definitive groove metal album, though condemned by defenders of Exhorder as not - we can agree that Cowboys From Hell popularized the genre, a first, and that's nothing to shake your prick at.

Celebrating the twenty year anniversary since this influential album, legendary Rhino Records re-released it in a box set alongside an array of previously unreleased Pantera material.

The original Cowboys From Hell leaves well enough alone, letting you relive past mullet days by head banging along to "Cemetary Gates," "Psycho Holiday," "Domination" and the rest of the twelve monstrous tracks that thrust Pantera onto pick-up truck dashboards across America. Dimebag, Anselmo, Rex and Vinnie are all still indefinitely in your face. What still resonates most is Dimebag's incurable talent - the punchiest death metal sound funneled through groundbreaking orchestrated technique.

The second disc, available on the Rhino Extended release, is all live Pantera. Seven tracks, recorded at the Foundations Forum set in LA in 1990, are previously unreleased. The latter five tracks come from 1994's Alive and Hostile EP.

For diehards who splurge on the Deluxe Edition, there is a third disc featuring the eleven legendary demos that became Cowboys From Hell, and one previously unheard Pantera tune entitled "The Will To Survive," a hairier track more like pre-Cowboys Pantera.

Shit, now that's more than an afternoon's worth of music. More like twenty years' worth.

Track Listing:

Disc One
1. Cowboys From Hell
2. Primal Concrete Sledge
3. Psycho Holiday
4. Heresy
5. Cemetery Gates
6. Domination
7. Shattered
8. Clash With Reality
9. Medicine Man
10. Message In Blood
11. The Sleep
12. The Art Of Shredding

Disc Two
1. Domination – Live
2. Psycho Holiday – Live
3. The Art Of Shredding – Live
4. Cowboys From Hell – Live
5. Cemetery Gates – Live
6. Primal Concrete Sledge – Live
7. Heresy – Live
8. Domination – Live, Alive And Hostile EP
9. Primal Concrete Sledge – Live, Alive And Hostile EP
10. Cowboys From Hell – Live, Alive And Hostile EP
11. Heresy – Live, Alive And Hostile EP
12. Psycho Holiday – Live, Alive And Hostile EP

Disc Three
1. The Will To Survive
2. Shattered – Demo
3. Cowboys From Hell – Demo
4. Heresy – Demo
5. Cemetery Gates – Demo
6. Psycho Holiday – Demo
7. Medicine Man – Demo
8. Message In Blood – Demo
9. Domination – Demo
10. The Sleep – Demo
11. The Art Of Shredding – Demo

Published by Tangible Sounds

CD Review: Apocalyptica's 7th Symphony

Apocalyptica
7th Symphony
4/5

Listen To: At The Gates Of Manala
Skip It: Not Strong Enough

You have to love when metal and classical fans have something in common. It's not all that rare these days with the growing neo-classical metal scene gaining a following. There are even classical-punk bands kicking around and getting recognition. But, undoubtedly, at the forefront of neo-classical alt music is Apocalyptica from Helsinki, Finland, who are back with their seventh studio album, aptly titled 7th Symphony.

The record follows suit with previous Apocalyptica works with four songs featuring well known guest vocalists, being Bush X frontman Gavin Rossdale, Brent Smith of Shinedown, Lacey Mosley from Flyleaf, and Gojira's Joe Duplantier.

With such variance in vocal presence, 7th Symphony's lyricised tracks keep the band pushing new boundaries. Apocalyptica is cello metal, but, for example with Gavin Rossdale's track "End Of Me," they create a very radio friendly heavy rock sound. It's just too bad the radio doesn't pay any attention. Joe Duplantier's vocal offering, coming late in the ten song record, avenges the mainstream's lacking acknowledgment of this band. "Bring Them To Light" is dark, heavy, and spattered with crackling death metal vocals.

On the heavy side is where 7th Symphony holds tightest. The other six tracks, all instrumentals, are gritty, incorporating death, thrash, and even metalcore tactics, hardly sounding like cello music at all. Seven minute album opener "At The Gates Of Manala" mixes riffs and feedback; blast and triplet drum beats; and tempo-dampening breakdowns.

The record also has mellow tracks, like "On The Rooftop With Quasimodo," that rely on less doomish, mood-setting metal. "Sacra" dawns a beat riding tambourine for the album's second last track, the cleanest tune on the record. However, on the whole, this is a heavy; at times hooky and catchy offering from... shall I say it? Hell, from the Mozarts of Metal.

Track Listing:

1. At The Gates Of Manala
2. End Of Me, featuring Gavin Rossdale
3. Not Strong Enough, featuring Brent Smith
4. 2010, featuring Dave Lombardo
5. Beautiful
6. Broken Pieces, featuring Lacey Mosley
7. On The Rooftop With Quasimodo
8. Bring Them To Light, featuring Joe Duplantier
9. Sacra
10. Rage Of Poseidon

Published by Tangible Sounds