Fucked Up - The Chemistry Of Common Life

frontman Damian, for the uninitiated, is a complete rock n roll beast. Their recent gig in London was shut down because Damian, aka Pink Eyes, decided to moon the audience after repeatedly launching his hefty self into the crowd. And they were only the support band.

More recently, their performance at Reading climaxed in Pink Eyes exposing his ‘mangina’ to a bewildered crowd after thirty minutes of non-stop hardcore.

Now, imagine this chaos on record and you have ‘The Chemistry of Common Life’, the new album from the world’s greatest hardcore punk outfit. Don’t let the piccolo solo that opens the album fool you, within a matter of minutes you can not hear yourself think. In the best way possible, you understand.

This is Fucked Up’s second album. Or maybe their third. The Toronto based band operate on a basis where information is second to the product itself. They have no website and exist on cyberspace only in blogs, Wikipedia and ramblings of madmen. “It is rumoured that Pink Eyes once killed a man,” that sort of thing.

But this doest mean the band aren’t prolific or publicity shy. They have been banned from MTV following a typically outrageous performance in the US and have more than 25 releases under their belt, including an epic 18 minute version of fan’s favourite ‘Year Of The Pig’ and debut LP ‘The Hidden World’.

‘Magic Word’ is so awesome it deserves to be the national anthem of Canada. The title track is so good it deserves to be the national anthem of the UK.

It may not be worlds apart from their debut album, but there is something so primal and raw in everything Fucked Up do that you can’t help but love every single minute of this album. Few bands can get away with things like this and not many fans would be so keen to see a band tear a new one in their local venue.

There are not many bands like Fucked Up and there are not many frontmen like Pink Eyes. Cherish and idolise them. Make them your favourite band and do whatever you have to in order to see them live. Even if you have to kill a man.