Thursday, August 22, 2013

G&P Review: Fuck the Facts

Fuck the Facts
Amer
Big Cartel

If you took a hammer to Fuck the Facts’ seven-song Amer EP, you could probably kludge together a halfway decent screamo/shoegaze jam from the remaining shards and a bit of Krazy Glue.
Amer’s first moments on “Une Triste Vue” run through a tinkling crystalline forest, like listening to Jesu on fast forward. But winter is coming and the night is dark and full of terrors. So as the snow drifts pile up, and you have a premonition this won’t end well. From there leap ahead three songs to the befogged bewilderment of “A Void.” Decisions have been made in the gloom, unthinkable, irrevocable. Another judicious use of fast forward will wrap you in the Vicodin overdose warmth of the second half of penultimate song “L'enclume et le Marteau” and its resignation in the face of death. Taken together those snippets make a suicidal triptych of longing and the inability to cope.
While that all makes for a great game of what-if, you’ll notice we’re skipping over a lot of material. You can’t really overlook the fact that grindcore is these Canadiens’ chosen avocation and that the four or five minutes of slow motion mopery you could stitch together out of the remnants of this 17 minute EP are far more interesting than anything that blasts a beat. Against the open veined crimson of Fuck the Fact’s extra-genre digressions, the actual grind feels as gray and rigor mortised as a week old corpse. There’s something lifeless behind the eyes when Fuck the Facts start blasting that leaves the grind portions wanting. While that can be a bit disappointing, there’s no denying Amer is ripe for a clever remixing.

[Full disclosure: the band sent me a download.]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I 'd like to first say I'm a fan of your blog, it's rare to find intelligent, articulate reviews within this style of music. Also you've pointed me toward some great bands
(Dephosphorus, Priapus).

With FTF I like the addition of their bassist performing some vocals, but their production style (including Amer)seems to have gotten worse.

Not sure if this is intentional or the type of sound they wanted, but I prefer the clarity of "Disgorge Mexico"


Thanks again for the good reviews and recommendations.