Fucked Up

While Canadian punk provocateurs Fucked Up play aggressive and incendiary music, that's hardly where their desire to stir up trouble begins and ends. The group strays far from the standard template of four-four punk stomp, incorporating extended instrumental workouts, unusual arrangements, and lengthy experimental passages along with the furious guitars and ranting vocals. While Fucked Up have paid homage on record to pioneering anarchist movements and creative and political troublemakers of all stripes, they've also flirted with fascist images and obscure mysticism in a bid to puzzle and confront their audiences. And despite their fondness for lengthy musical statements, Fucked Up waited until four years into their recording career to record a full-length album.

Fucked Up formed in Toronto, Ontario, in 2001; the group members (all of whom use pseudonyms) were Pink Eyes (aka Father Damien) on lead vocals, 10,000 Marbles on lead guitar, Concentration Camp on rhythm guitar, Mustard Gas on bass, and Mr. Jo (aka Guinea Beat) on drums. In 2002, the band released its first record, a vinyl 7" called No Parasan distributed by Deranged Records. Over the next four years, Fucked Up would release a steady stream of singles, EPs, and cassettes, most notably the infamous Looking for Gold vinyl 12", which featured the epic-length title song (which incorporates massive guitar overdubs, extended drum solos, and a whistled coda); rather than deal with the expense of the EP's elaborate package, the band opted to post the record online rather than go into a third pressing.

Fucked Up's purposefully obscure and cryptic lyrical concerns led some music journalists to suggest the band was playing a bit too lightly with fascist ideology, an accusation the group seemed to cite when it featured a photo of a Hitler Youth rally on the sleeve of a split single with Haymaker. (The bandmembers also frequently cited their manager David Eliade as a key lyrical influence, but if he's an actual Malcolm McLaren-style Svengali or a fictional creation in the manner of Randy Fitzsimmons is anyone's guess.)

In 2006, Fucked Up released their much-anticipated full-length album, Hidden World, through Jade Tree, a musically ambitious collection that featured 13 songs in 72 minutes, though its release didn't stop their ongoing parade of singles and EPs, eight of which appeared the same year as the album. By 2008, the band had accumulated nearly 40 records to its name, mostly limited vinyl singles, and a third guitarist had been added to the lineup, going by the name of Young Governor. In March, a chaotic performance on a pedestrian bridge at South by Southwest added to the hype for Year of the Pig, which was released in mid-July that year. Just three months later, the band released its first full-length for Matador, The Chemistry of Common Life. The 2011 follow-up, David Comes to Life, was a highly conceptual beast of a double album, nearly 80 minutes in length, ushered in by several accompanying singles and a limited Record Store Day vinyl companion piece titled David's Town. While not as conceptually daring, the band's fourth album, 2014's Glass Boys, found Fucked Up continuing to evolve their sprawling sound with an album of personal and self-reflective material. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi