Hey gang, it's the ol' Billster back with a VENGEANCE with another "wicked sick" music review for all you "hep cats" out there. Now, I'm aware that I've been away since October 5th and I said that these reviews were going to be a more or less weekly thing, but 1) none of you read them anyway, you worthless sacks of shit, and B) I've been pretty busy lately, keeping myself occupied with things like formulating excuses as to why I've been so tardy with getting a new review out.
Unrelated paragraph before the review actually begins #2 (UPBTRAB2)- This past Tuesday, since Cameron was back in town for Thanksgiving vacation, DPA had our first practice session since… shit, August, maybe? Possibly even earlier. Anyway, despite the fact that we hadn't played together for awhile, the old songs we ran through sounded fairly solid, and we began some work on new songs for our second record, based on some thoroughly half-assed and sloppy drum demos I had recorded in 15 minutes, and, despite the fact that most of those consisted of one cool rhythmic idea I had and then some (read: excessive) jamming on my fallback math-rock-by-numbers time signatures (5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, and 17, all phrased in extremely obvious groupings instead of being manipulated into patterns that are interesting to listen to), those sounded pretty cool too. It was good to play with Cam-Cam and Andy again, and it gave Scooby Drew and me an opportunity to give Camtrak our portion of the money for the official CD pressing for our now-almost-two-months-delayed debut album, so that will probably see a Christmas release instead of a never one.
Now to the review…
Why do I like the Fucking Champs so much? Their influences on the metal spectrum aren't Meshuggah and Cynic and Gorguts and all the other too-technical-for-their-own-good groups that I cream my jeans over because I am an unapologetic muso (I mean, a couple nights ago, I watched a bunch of Paul Gilbert videos, and his picture is in the dictionary next to "wanker" TWICE), but rather, 70s and 80s hard rock/metal groups like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy, et al., and the electronic stuff they do owes as much to new age assholes like Vangelis as it does to enjoyable ambient artists like Brian Eno, and none to the Aphex Twin/Venetian Snares/Squarepusher IDM bullshit I also like because they cram lots of programmed drum notes into tiny spaces for minutes at a time. I guess the fact(s) that they aren't ruined by awful castrato power metal vocals (when they do have vocals, they're back-of-the-mix slacker midrange tunefulness), and since, because of that, they shift the focus of the music to bitchin' guitar interplay and little else, and because the tunes also, unlike their old-school influences, generally feature lots of tricky meter changes like MATH ROCK OH GOD ORGASM, and because the sequencing of the electronic dicking-around between the br00tal riffage means even this pretty two-track-minded band never gets monotonous, make the Fucking Champs, and this album in particular, a lot better, and way more listenable to my jaded ears, than they have any right to be.
Standouts: "What's A Little Reign?", "NWOBHM 2", "These Glyphs Are Dusty", "Extra Man". The rest are good, especially the atypical "Policenauts", but if you wanna get a preview of this fine record, go for one of those four. Huh, that's funny, in an album called IV, I picked four favorites. IT'S A CONSPIRACY!
