G&P Review: Fuck the Facts

The sweat dripped from his forehead and ran down his cheeks. It welled at his throat and flowed down his chest. An inexhaustible reservoir of sweat.... If only, he thought, everything were inexhaustible this way--he would hardly need to exist as an independent, solid entity. It would be enough to be connected up with something, to be connected to the source of the stream. He'd been sure of that so far; but sources dwindle and dry up, and the more he sought to cling to them the farther, he suspected, they would recede into the distance.

Yukio Mishima
"Sword"
1963

Fuck the Facts
Die Miserable
Relapse
For a band declaring they're bound to Die Miserable, I just don't get the feeling that Canada's Fuck the Facts are all that perturbed by the prospect. Grindcore is supposed to be angry music; Fuck the Facts should rage, rage against the dying of that light a little bit more. Though they're consummately talented musicians, I struggled with Die Miserable's lack of heart. (This may be just a matter of not clicking with my tastes, so I recommend VII's ecstatic revelry in the album's praise.)
There's an unfortunate mechanical sterility to the drums that I know damn well were performed organically and that trickles through the entire performance. Every riff, scream, fill and bass run are technically on point and masterfully executed, but I kept wondering what someone like Landmine Marathon could have achieved with this batch of songs instead. Sure they'd shatter some of the finery, but the heart would be balls out (if that makes any sort of anatomical sense).
Die Miserable's clear highpoint is mid-album pivot "Census Blank," which succeeds in evoking that sense of impending apocalypse and annihilation via a maddeningly tapped central riff that would have done Botch-era Dave Knudson proud. It's like trying to decode a lifesaving Morse code message when all of the codebooks have been blanked out.
The rest of the songs left me cold, like the faux-Neurosis transcendental near-miss of the title track. I just kept expecting Fuck the Facts to deliver that truly knock out song that would define Die Miserable and, much like Godot, it just never showed up.
Brutal Truth are the patron saints of off-kilter grind, but they never lost sight of their titular adjective in pursuit of their nominal noun. Die Miserable pays pro forma tribute to the dread that must accompany the unknowable prospect of our own dissolution, but the emotions never dig deeper than the surface. Rather than dying miserable, this album leaves me thinking Fuck the Facts will die alone after a period of prolonged indifference just like the rest of us.

[Full disclosure: Fuck the Facts sent me a download.]