Album Review: Fucked Up - Another Day
Reviewed by Drew McCarthy
Another Day the newest album by Canadian punks Fucked Up once again finds the band reinventing the wheel and seemingly not caring or being afraid of purists or naysayers turning their noses up at what they create.
Punk was originally being a genre born out of political apathy and hedonistic ideas of being free. It did not however seem to take very long for Punk to lose the ethos of what it once was and to eventually descend into a generic and stereotypical parody of itself, where the fashion of studs and mohawks seemed to matter more to some people than the actual music.
Thank God then for a band like Fucked Up, a band who discovered that doing things in a different way, a what some may consider to be against Punk, was actually one of the best things that they could do as a band. This steadfast approach to creating songs that are overflowing with sophisticated and emotional storytelling and cathartic lyricism has set them in good stead. It has allowed them to create a body of work that just like their previous releases will stand the test of time.
Exploring the history and politics related to cannabis is a subject which Fucked Up have chosen to address on the title track. This is not just a righteous slab of hardcore punk, but serves as an in depth exploration of the long and storied relationship between humanity and cannabis. It's a topic that was researched in great length by the vocalist of Fucked Up himself, Damiana Abraham, cannabis being a plant that has had a unique role in many cultures over the years and has been proven to have many beneficial properties, but yet is still criminalised in many places around the world.
With this newest album Fucked Up have proven once again to be a band that like the punks that have gone before them, to be a band that are not afraid to confront the issues that make the establishment uncomfortable, though they are not just your typical one dimensional band, as their sound is imbued with a melodicand uniqueness that punk has been sorely lacking as of late and this just goes to show that this bunch of Canadians are a band that no one should underestimate.
