Punk Ain't Dead: Fucked Up's "David Comes to Life"

About a month ago, Canadian hardcore/punk band Fucked Up released their third full-length album David Comes To Life while I was too busy working crazy hours to notice or care. I mean, can you blame me? The album definitely falls into the category of hardcore, which is a genre mostly oppressively loud and repetitive, and generally I'd be down with just about anything else. But when I finally listened to the album biking home the long way to my apartment in Bed-Stuy, the music, colliding with the wind coming off the river and the potholes in the pavement finally started to make sense.

The first thing that you notice is that this album is unapologetically loud and full of raw youthful energy. Pounding drums and the lion's roar of Father Damian/Pink Eyes' voice let you know immediately what musical territory you've entered for the next 78 minutes. Simple distorted riffs and tones carry most of the album and are mostly reminiscent of The Who overlaid with Hot Water Music, but Fucked Up manages to push these trite melodies forward with the force of sheer willpower and enthusiasm (especially on tracks like "Ship of Fools" and "Running on Nothing"). Actually, the whole album feels like it's being violently shoved up a hill by a gang of grinning lunatics only to be released on free wheels all the way back down (perfect for biking over bridges).

But as I carried David with me through the streets of Williamsburg, noticing that there was not a silly moustache in sight, something else hit me: There is nothing ironic about this album. It's a four-part rock opera about a boy named David professing his tortured love for a girl named Veronica (spoiler alert: she DIES). It's a love story based on protest music. It's hardcore for chrissakes. To do all of these things at a time when even the lamest of the cool kids have turned their noses up at self-serious punk music (and let's be real here: Green Day's American Idiot pretty severely killed off most of punk's appeal as a genre while at the same time eliciting groans whenever the words "rock" and "opera" were used in the same sentence) requires the kind of raw energy that only Fucked Up seems to have these days. The result is a highly respectable album that may yet start a reawakening of heady punk within the mainstream (David Comes To Life ranked 12th a few weeks ago on the Billboard "Tastemaker Albums."). Personally, I've been sick of this New York version of standing-around-at-concerts-with-your-arms-folded bullshit for a while. I'm ready to thrash again.

Fucked Up - Turn The Season

Fucked Up - Running on Nothing

Fucked Up - Ship of Fools