FUCK THE FACTS – Die Miserable (Relapse Rec.)

by Ray Henry (www.mouthforwar.net)

Can we really call Canada’s Fuck the Facts a pure grind-core band any more? I mean, they certainly sound like death/grind, but pigeonholing the band into a single genre would be the easy way out, especially when taking their entire discography into account. This group may have started out as grind purists, but they’ve certainly morphed into something entirely all their own.

Die Miserable, the band’s ninth studio album, delivers eight solid songs packed full with manic drums, discordant guitars and vocal malevolence in just over a 35 minutes (the final track eats up 21 of them) time span. That alone right there should let you know that this isn’t your typical grind album — or grind band, for that matter. “Drift” gets things going after a short series of distant sound effect have given way to swirling, out of control merry-go-round guitars and barbaric drum work. Vocally, the band is where they have always been, delivering their message through a series of barks, growls and shouts that are so completely incomprehensible that it only makes the music backing it that much more ferocious. The short, stop-and-go rests amongst this beast of a song give it a spastic feel that I love.

A good helping of reverb and dissonance get “Cold Hearted” off to a relatively smooth start as Fuck the Facts build up to a swarming, churning mass of grinding blasts and pummeling rhythms. Much like the band’s own evolution each track on Die Miserable morphs multiple elements and influences into a cohesive and oddly fluid presence. “Lifeless” starts off with a memorable bit of riffing as group vocals announce their arrival before it jumps and dives all over the place with manic blasts and off-kilter guitar work. It’s the seven plus minute “Census Blank,” hover, that’s the highlight of the album. Fuck the Facts continue with the discordance, but at a dramatically slower pace. The opening guitars swell with a bit of a sludgy vibe. The song does eventually ramp up in tempo, but it’s not in the typical ferociousness that the band is known for — the measured and calculated increase shows a maturation from the group that we haven’t encountered before. It’s a hell of a song.

Another example of the band evolving and morphing is the calm and serene opening to “Alone.” The first minute and a half certainly doesn’t prepare you for the grinding assault that arrives shortly after. I never thought I would use the word atmosphere when reviewing a grind album, but man, there’s a heap of it in this song. The sub-two minute title track incorporates a decent bit of dissonance and melancholy into an album that is all over the place in terms of emotion. “A Cowards Existence” is chock full of noise, thundering drums and ADD guitar work. It’s as if the band decided to see just how messy and haphazard they could be with a song and still have it turn out fucking amazing — likewise with the closing track, “95.” Both songs have so much going on within them that it’ll take more than a few listens of the album to fully graphs what Fuck the Facts are doing.

I love progression in a band’s sound. The key to that progression however is to not simply abandon your core. Fuck the Facts are obviously quite aware of this fact. Die Miserable is an outstanding album containing some of their best work to date — and I am absolutely infatuated with their more primal grind material. The amount of diversity and atmosphere that the group injects into this album should be too much for it and cause all sorts of problems, but that’s not the case in the least. The music on this album may be all over the spectrum but it’s also cohesive and flowing — a testament to skilled musicians if ever there was one.

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