Best of 2010

First things first: Warpaint's The Fool was this year's best record. I'm a punk at heart, so most of my friends gawked at my love for them. Whatever, you don't get a Rumours every decade, so when it comes you have to take notice.

That said, I still had my eye on a lot of punk this year. From my list you'll see my pallet is quite Canadian-centric. Well, it's not my fault that we have some of the best punk and metal bands around.

Hoser-shit aside, I was blissfully impressed by Early Graves's debut record Goner. That came viciously close to Agnostic Front's Victim In Pain, for many, myself included, the pinnacle new-age hardcore record. On the other end of the spectrum was Jam frontman Paul Weller's solo record Wake Up The Nation. Chock-full of dubs and delectable garage-to-anywhere guitar, he approached filling Joe Strummer's shoes.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Here's my favourite records, in the genres I have the right to judge, of 2010.

PUNK

1. Fucked Up - Year Of The Ox
2. Germ Attak - Death to Cops EP
3. Little Girls - Concepts
4. The Business - Doing The Business
5. No Age - Everything In Between

HARDCORE/METAL

1. Fuck The Facts - Unnamed EP
2. Bison BC - Dark Ages
3. Early Graves - Goner
4. 1349 - Demonoir
5. Madball - Empire

INDIE/GARAGE

1. Warpaint - The Fool
2. Myelin Sheaths - Get On Your Nerves
3. The Sadies - Darker Circles
4. Best Coast - Crazy For You
5. Weakerthans - Live At The Burton Cummings Theatre

This article was originally published by Tangible Sounds

Tape Review

FUCK THE FACTS
Live In Whitby
Self-Released/Band Camp

Spitting on 2010 technology, Fuck The Facts released a cassette tape last month, Live In Whitby, a recording of a performance at the Wing Shack in Whitby, Ontario on April 11, 2009. Enough to get die hard collectors antsy, the tape was limited to a slim fifty-three copies (they’re already sold out). The album is also available as a Name Your Price download on BandCamp.com, where FTF’s punk/grind masterpiece Unnamed EP (February 2010) is also available.

Continuously transforming over eight studio albums, countless singles, splits and compilations, FTF’s ever indefinable style tiptoes around punk, noise, stoner-groove and industrial influenced grind since 1998. Live In Whitby offers a glimpse of the band during peak Disgorge Mexico (2008) era with six of the nine tracks, including “Kelowna” and “Sleepless”, taken from the album. The oldest song on the tape is “La Tete Hors De L’eau,” originally appearing on 2003 release Overseas Connection.

One constant throughout FTF’s distinct grindcore approach is sampling voice and sound into their music. Evidently, this is not a studio-only technique. I was at the Wing Shack show, mesmerised watching drummer Mathieu Vilandrê swivel back and forth between drummer and sound dub roles, whacking at a synthesizer to his side when called for. Nothing is excluded from FTF style when playing live.

Singer Mel Mongeon also impresses on the tape with her monstrous stage presence, as intimidating as a ravenous Pit Bull. From her territorial markings spattered into the mic – “We’re Fuck The Facts from fuckin’ Ottawa!” – to her dedicated, intestine spindling scream assault, she shoves a middle finger up the ass of any hollow commercial metal.

The Live In Whitby lineup (left to right): Marc Bourgon, Topon Das, Mathieu Vilandrê, Johnny Ibay, Mel Mongeon.

Lead guitarist and band founder Topon Das, along with second guitarist Johnny Ibay and bassist Marc Bourgon, feed you the integral cherry on top of FTF’s approach. Drenched with distortion and devilishly down-tuned, the fellows rip through their unique grind sound with exact precision on Whitby. Not a brow-raising pick squeal nor panic inducing lead is fumbled.

FTF followers will be glad to get their hands, or hard drives, on this, the band’s first live release since 2003′s Live Damage. Whitby brings live new era FTF into your home and an opportunity to salivate over the richness of their performance whenever you desire. The sound quality is undeniable; aside from the cattle calls between songs, nothing differs from the studio. It is an imprint of a strikingly tight and technical group.

Whitby is dedicated to the memory of Canadian visual artist and musician Michal Majewski, who passed shortly after the event. He designed the poster for the show, pictured above. A catalogue of his artwork is available here. Majewski was the bassist for Ontario thrash/grind band F.A.T.O., who opened at the Wing Shack show.

Track Listing:
1. Absence And Despite
2. The Storm
3. Kelowna
4. Everyone Is Robbing The Dead
5. The Sound Of Your Smashed Head
6. La Culture Du Faux
7. The Pile Of Flesh You Carry
8. Sleepless
9. La Tete Hors De L’eau

Published by This Literary Magazine

Fuck The Facts at The Alex in Brantford (Live Review)

Fuck The Facts
The Alex, Brantford
April 23, 2010

“Move the fuck up here,” beckoned Fuck The Facts bassist Marc Bourgon at the Alex in Brantford last Friday night while lead vocalist Mel Mongeon skittered around the empty front row pit-space. The audience of local punk and metal-core diehards quickly filled the floor’s void for the intimidating 10-song mudslide of drop-B tuned guitars and blast-beat infernos leaving a grind core bullet hole in the Brantford scene.

The quintet slipped ferociously into “Wake” off their latest release which came out in February. You can’t find the limited 1000 copy pressing in stores, aptly titled “Unnamed EP,” no doubt playing on Fuck The Facts’s fractured metal style most closely associated with grind, but ever indefinable with varying genre injections of industrial, punk, and stoner groove. Further personifying the confusion record buyers face when encountering their music, the band played on a continuously unlit stage at the Alex with minimal banter between songs that often seamlessly melded into one another. The distortion dripping chaos is faceless to the average heavy rock listener, empowering FTF’s niche noise to its fullest intentions.

They slowed the set’s tempo with “My Failures (Just Like Yesterday)” off their 2008 split with Belgium deathgrinders Leng Tch’e. Then a quick, audacious rendition of “The Sound Of Your Smashed Head” off Stigmata High-Five triggered more slam-moves in the pit, and Mongeon couldn’t help but tizzy-groove her growl spewing noggin with the blast beat crash along. “Kelowna” off 2008 full-length Disgorge Mexico and “Ballet Addict” from 2003’s Backstabber Etiquette rounded out the performance that gave Brantford a glimpse of what‘s going on around Ottawa right now: original hardcore metal that knows no borders and plays into no commercial agenda. Or, real art.