Saturday, December 22, 2012

Live Review - Fucked Up - December 21st at Warsaw!


Fucked Up has all the ingredients to make a great band— mystery, mythology, that insignia, a theatrical boisterous singer—but that would all mean nothing if the music was no good. Thankfully Fucked Up don’t disappoint, and last night at Brooklyn’s Warsaw was no different. The music is a wall of guitars and roars that envelopes you. The bandmates make up for the lack of layered sophistication from the recordings in bravado, energy, and devotion to thrash the hell out of whatever town they’re passing through.

Things started epic and then got louder. A slower rendition of “Let Her Rest” perfectly amped up the audience so that when lead singer Damian Abraham jumped onto the stage the crowd went berserk. The setlist consisted of a neat variety of very old (Color Removal, Police), not so old (Black Albino Blues, Toronto FC, I Hate Summer), and tracks from their most recent LP, David Comes to Life.

Like always, half the crowd was hardcore, and half the crowd was more intrigued to stand by and witness the mess of a pit, with Patrick Stickles of Titus Andronicus leading the audience as its most ballsy participant, throwing himself and his shoes around the floor after a surprise stage dive a couple songs in.

Damian constantly mentions how he feels obligated to cut himself on his forehead as a way to give the concertgoers their money’s worth. In a sense, so too the audience feels the need to give the same thing back with our sweat and blister toes, our hoarse voices, our bruised shoulders, and our ringing eardrums (which still persists as of this writing). All we endure and bask in as gratitude for everything this band gives us tour after tour, 7”after 7”, and scar after scar.

Fucked Up are the surprise headliners for the last night of the Brooklyn Night Bazaar. I’ll be making the pilgrimage to the venue of course. I can’t think of a better way to welcome the Mayan Apocalypse than with these Canadians.

-Photos and Story by Joe Waslin

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