Customer Reviews

Chemistry Of Common Life

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was a huge fan of F+cked Up's "Hidden World" album and most of their preceding singles. However, I think this album has managed to be an improvement not only in catchy songs but also in terms of creativity.

The band has added loads of shoegaze / krautrock - esque guitars, Moog sounds, and ultra melodic background vocals to their Last Rights / Poison Idea / Blitz sound.

Not only that but the playing has gotten much better - especially in terms of the drumming. There are a lot of creative and interesting drums on this album that only adds to the song-writing skills and lyrical weirdness.

If you like their last album and can handle somewhat experimental hardcore punk rock - Black Flag, Husker Du, Meat Puppets, Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Bl'ast, Die Kreuzen, etc - YOU NEED TO GET THIS ASAP. This ain't no party; this ain't no disco.

Did Kevin Shields produce this masterpiece? Everytime I play this cd, I hear something different every second of every song. This is a carefully crafted and recorded cd in both musical direction and lyrical presentation. Layered guitars and rants about man and his relationship to god, or man's un-epiphanic moments in every day life are vehemently screamed by "Pink Eyes" in a majority of the songs. They have 2 cool mood emoting instrumental pieces which bridge the philosophical themes of the cd. my fave of the year so far!

A breath of fresh air to my collection. The sound is raw, but layered. Not your typical hardcore album. OK, so maybe I haven't kept up with the scene and my tastes may have changed over the years, but I click with this. Feels like an album, not a collection of songs. Wish I knew what they were singing about but I'll search that out later. Next great breakout band? That will really f*** them up.

Crooked Head gets airplay on nme radio for good reason. It is a really, really great tune. I think that anybody who loves rock and roll longs for that band that plays loud and hard and just generally pulls out all the stops and that track had me believing that this band was IT.
So I bought the CD.
I bought the CD even though in the back of my mind I wondered whether I'd be disappointed to find that there was only one good track on the album and I had already heard it. For some reason this seems to happen more and more, but perhaps I'm just falling into that tiresome 'Oh but for the good old days' trope/trap. Yet it seems as though seven of the past six albums I've acquired have been disappointing but for the single track that prompted the purchase.
Nevertheless, I awaited the arrival of this album full of anticipation, eager anticipation.
Alas, upon arrival it proved to be a disappointment.
Make no mistake, this album contains one really excellent track. The problem is that the rest of it is composed of a monotonous concoction of the same old stuff repeated over and over again; and it's over-produced.
Truth is that I couldn't wait for the CD to be over so that I could put it away and forget about it.
Granted, one isn't expecting some kind of deeply meaningful music out of a bunch of 'hardcore punk rockers' whatever that means but one would hope for some variety, some depth, some quirkiness or genius and lots of brio. With the exception of Crooked Head which supplies all of the above, this one ain't got it.
For a sound that rocks, and I'm talking about the mindless, deep down, let's party hard and maybe think about breaking stuff or just acting like idiots kind of music try a group called Fu Manchu. It is a California act which, although playing in a slightly different genre than this band, will reliably rock you despite the fact that their music is pretty much facile and unidimensional which is my complaint about this album.
The difference is that this album, Chemistry of Life is F'd up, in my opinion.

If your sibling with the double-digit IQ formed a band with some of his/her buddies, they might sound like this. It's not unlike what would ensue if Cannibal Corpse visited Sesame Street and beat the block to a pile of gore, then did Bowie covers.

This is what happens when pro wrestlers start sipping on smart drinks, eventually referring to face-diving and fanny-slapping as Art. Finger-painting Picasso pablum: commonplace faces melting over the tops of flame.

The Human League with Sam Kinison rocking the mic. Bluto in a New Wave mood. Stretch Armstrong in goth attire. Really? Joyful day! Hope I've got enough protein powder and vaseline on hand to survive the winter.