“Year Of The Pig” starts off gently with clean plucked octaves and a descending Hammond figure, but prog-hardcore maestros Fucked Up are just lulling you into a false sense of security.
Of course, it’s easy to do something adventurous with a track that clocks in at over eighteen minutes in length, but Fucked Up are experienced adventurers who know the value of wandering away from the path you thought you were on.
Fucked Up are not a punk band of the usual stripe; the naïve rebellion of the late seventies is entirely absent from their work, as are the bright and breezy pop sensibilities of the MySpace wave. To be honest, I don’t think punk is a fair word to describe them – they’re as far beyond punk as Tool are beyond heavy metal.
And so, as “Year Of The Pig” develops, breathy indie-girl vocals and piano play off against a fuzzed walking bassline and a piratical male bellow, the tune slowly building out with the introduction of guitars, reaching false peaks, balancing the delicate against the furious.
Oh, and did I mention much of “Year Of The Pig” is written in a waltz time signature?
After about seven minutes, the throaty pirate-man starts chanting a gargled mantra over a growing crescendo of guitar and crashing cymbals … and are those bongos you can hear? I think they are.
“Year Of The Pig” continues in the same manner, a sinuous and abrasive sine wave of dynamics, a punk rock opera condensed into slightly less than twenty minutes, full of light and shade and detail. When the end finally arrives, it’s sudden and shocking; you realise you’ve been completely captivated by the music of Fucked Up, and freedom seems almost unwelcome by comparison.
“Year Of The Pig” sounds like what you might get if you kept Les Savy Fav in solitary confinement and force-fed them The Mars Volta. It’s paranoid and exultant; it’s visceral, intelligent and mindless all at the same time.
“Year Of The Pig” is Fucked Up’s masterpiece and a genre-smashing triumph of a tune; fight for a copy.
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