Fucked Up: Hardcore Chemists

10/10/08 2:20pm

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

Fucked Up's The Chemistry Of Common Life hit stores on Tuesday through the band's new label, Matador Records.

Drummer Jonah "Mr. Jo" Falco is full of praise for their new home.

"Matador is highly organized, highly structured, highly efficient and really easy to work with," he says, before cheekily adding, "Now, you take whatever reflection you want and apply it to [former label] Jade Tree."

Fucked Up released their first full-length, 2006's Hidden World, through Jade Tree. But soon after its release, they began having troubles with the label. Other band members complained of mismanagement and Fucked Up soon began trying to leave.

But looking back at the situation, Falco says it was really more of a bad fit than anything else. That isn't the case with Matador, and he says the band felt comfortable with the label before they even started working together. It comes from the fact that the people working at Matador understand where Fucked Up are coming from in terms of influences.

"They own all our favourite records, they know all our favourite records," says Falco. "This is a good musical fit and a good cultural fit as much as it is, like, a business decision."

The Chemistry Of Common Life is a highly experimental hardcore record that features guest appearances from Katie Stelmanis and the Vivian Girls, as well as a flute solo by Falco's mother.

While the entire band are responsible for the album's creation, the lyrics and subject matter are the collective works of vocalist Damian "Pink Eyes" Abraham and guitarist Mike "10,000 Marbles" Haliechuk. They both write from different angles. Falco describes Pink Eyes as "obsessed with these secular viewings of the Bible — and also religious ones, but he's not a religious person so to speak," while he says Haliechuk mainly writes from an "ecological, naturalistic point of view." That, Falco says, splits the record's subject matter between "themes of creation and rebirth and evolution.

"You get sort of this very verbose and complex representation of those themes through the filter of the physical world, i.e. religion, even though God is just, like, obviously metaphysical for everybody. But you know, religion and the notion of God is, like, a worldly thing. And then you get this scientific, outer-worldly, big bang, cosmos, nature, plants and all these things that, depending on your viewpoints of religion, maybe act as something else outside of religion."

But releasing a full-length album and touring it isn't slowing the band down. They recently recorded their "Year Of The Rat" 12-inch single, a 12-minute hardcore epic.

Fucked Up are also heading back out on the road to promote The Chemistry Of Common Life. Part of that jaunt includes the band's annual F-ed Up Fest, which includes seven Toronto shows in conjunction with Halloween weekend. You can see the band at these shows:

Oct. 11 Montreal, QC @ La Sala Rossa w/Dillinger Four, Statues and Omegas
Oct. 30 Toronto, ON @ Sneaky Dee's w/Final Fantasy, One Hundred Dollars, Vivian Girls and Katie Stelmanis (8 p.m.)
Oct. 30 Toronto, ON @ Rancho Relaxo w/Tropics and Lullabye Arkestra (1 a.m., free)
Oct. 31 Toronto, ON @ Sneaky Dee's w/Sex Vid, Demons Claws, Quest For Fire and Jack Of Heart (8 p.m.)
Oct. 31 Toronto, ON @ Rancho Relaxo w/Teenanger (1 a.m., free)
Nov. 1 Toronto, ON @ Kathedral w/Mind Eraser, Sex Vid, Rampage, The Shitty Limits and Molested Youth (noon)
Nov. 1 Toronto, ON @ Sneaky Dee's w/Iron Age, Hatred Surge and Endless Blockade (8 p.m.)
Nov. 1 Toronto, ON @ Rancho Relaxo w/Mad Men and Urban Blight (1 a.m., free)