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Year in Rock 2011 Nominee: Fucked Up

FUCKED UP
The Other Shoe

From: David Comes to Life
Released: June 7

Coming three years after their Polaris Music Prize winning album The Chemistry of Common Life, Fucked Up knew they'd be placed under increased scrutiny for David Comes to Life.  You don't just win an award proclaiming your band's album as best in the country and have your next go unnoticed.  Luckily for us, Fucked Up cranked out another winner, upping the ante on their wall of guitars attack and keeping the quality of their songwriting sharp.  Oh, who am I kidding?  They obliterated expectations, creating a tour du force record filled with mammoth riffs, thesis-worthy narrative arc and more catchy tunes than most any other record released this year.  It's a complicated, often confusing, always exhilarating 78 minutes of theatrics and primal scream that's only as good as it is fun, and how much fun it is depends on how open your mind is.

To the uninitiated, it can be hard work buying in to what Fucked Up is selling; the abrasive guitar dogpile is complimented by Damian Abraham's throat shredding gutteral shoutspeak, building a pretty remarkable force field to keep out sensitive ears.  In fact, if anyone else was singing these songs, you'd be hearing a lot more about this album and how great it is.  However, when you dig below the foreboding surface, you begin to notice just how much melody is at work here.  It's as though everything Fucked Up does is designed as an attempt to bend the mainstream to their will.  On David Comes to Life, it's starting to work; they've garnered plenty of attention this year, and not just because of their controversial name.  Mostly, it's coming from the non-prejudiced among us recognizing David Comes to Life for what it is: intricate, bombastic, and surprisingly delicate, it's easily one of the year's best albums, and not just in Canada.  And now, with such a glowing set of accomplishments on their resumé, it's becoming harder to ignore just what Fucked Up is: one of the most important bands making music today.  That's right, I said it.

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