FFFF Live Review: Fucked Up
Auditorium Shores, Nov. 4
Reviewed by Kevin Curtin, Fri., Nov. 2, 2012
Fucked Up
Auditorium Shores, Nov. 4Damian Abraham's monotone bark, situated atop Fucked Up's round, lustrous, hardcore sound, works like using gasoline as the topping on an ice cream sundae: It's a contrast of extremes. By the end of epic opener "Queen of Hearts," the bald, burly Canadian vocalist had shed his superfluous clothing and taken up residence in the crowd, where he remained until the show's end. Abraham stretched the microphone cable to its limits, 30 feet from the stage at least, carrying crowd surfers on his shoulders, trying on audience members' hats, and singing through the chain link fence to Fun Fun Fun Fest's outer, nonpaying audience. As the Toronto-based sextet snowballed minor progressions into massive walls of layered distortion, Abraham showed no allegiance to perfection, missing all kinds of lines in favor of sharing the mic with fans or simply shoving it into his mouth. Fucked Up has two worlds: their complexly crafted recordings characterized by lengthy narratives, thematic tones, and sonic home runs, and their shambolic, hell-raising, punk rock live show where the songs' nuances are secondary to the situational bedlam. Intense shout-alongs "The Other Shoe" and "Son the Father" left the audience buzzing.