The Long and Grinding Road
Fuck the Facts Aug. 18, Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St. (betw. Bway & Church St.), 212-219-3132; 7, $10.
At this time last year, Fuck The Facts had had enough. The band had criss-crossed the United States four times since the 2006 release of its seventh album, Stigmata High-Five. An invigorating flurry of static white noise, Stigmata veers close to pure grindcore but also casts the genre in a new light, thanks to the distinct chemistry between the bands core members. In tandem, guitarist Topon Das and drummer Mathieu Vilandré, who write all the music, convey the twisted hyper-assertiveness essential to extreme metal, yet maintain a knack for riffs and grooves that make you want to shake your fist in the air. Fuck The Facts plays grindcore with uncommon energy. Meanwhile, singer Mel Mongeons instantly recognizable shriek sets the band even further apart from their thrash-metal peers.
Stigmata High-Five was a milestone achievement for the band, and its first release on Relapse, the label thats home to acts like Cephalic Carnage, Pig Destroyer and Gadget. But along with the benefits of international distribution came a demand for rigorous touring. By last summer, everyones enthusiasm had begun to wane.
We toured to an extent that probably wasnt healthy, said Das. I think everyone was really burnt out.
Still, that didnt stop the group from piling in the van once more. Armed with portable recorders and its gear, Fuck The Facts headed south from its home base outside of Ottawa. Destination: Mexico.
Over two weeks, the band honed its ideas into what became its latest album, Disgorge Mexico. A road album only in the most abstract sense, Disgorge took shape at writing sessions in the basements, living rooms and garages of friends along the way. Das suggested that the changing scenery didnt influence the music directlyand that the whole point was to purge the experience anyway. Still, all the traveling must have affected Mongeons worldview, as her lyrics touch on notions of distance, motionlessness and cultural dominance.
We didnt play any shows on the trip, Das said. We wanted to get in the van and isolate ourselves that way instead of isolating ourselves in our jam space. The trick was making sure that we would have places to rehearse. But it all worked out pretty well.
Apparently, Mexico merely served as a means rather than an end. We werent even there for a day, said Das. It was more about the trip itself.
And in the songs that came out of the trip, Das and Vilandré slowed down enough to work in elements of traditional metal without losing the speed that made their music so compelling in the first place. For her part, Mongeons vocals are as hair-raising as ever, but the slower sections arguably give the violence in her voice more room to shine through. And, though unintelligible, her lyrics demand attention in ways that few of her peers strive for even now that grindcore has reached unforeseen levels of artfulness.
Still, Das shrugged off the idea that Fuck The Facts is breaking any new ground.
If you hear that, he said, thats awesome. But we really dont force it. Were stuck with the same fuckin twelve notes that everyone else is.