Anyone who missed Tuesday night’s show passed up one of the most entertaining, high-energy and just plain fun shows the has had to offer this year.
This six-piece out of Toronto were 100 percent true to their name — and by that I mean they embodied that ecstatic feeling of being highly inebriated, indestructible and filled with boundless, perpetual energy — exactly like being “fucked up.” It’s that energy that makes addictions so fun, for so long, for so many.
The energy started from the band’s loud and voraciously lovable screamer Damian “Pink Eyes” Abraham. Abraham’s impressive frame not only confirmed once again the jolly nature of large humans, it also acted as a one-person, high-on-life wrecking machine.
I lost count of the number of heavy plastic beer glasses he worked so hard at smashing with his skull throughout the set. He jumped off the stage repeatedly and tore through the slamming crowd, bear-hugging, mussing up hair, carrying revelers on his shoulders and constantly restarting the mosh pit. At one point he pulled down one of the Lounge’s signature strings of Christmas lights (it took him most of a song to untangle it from the conduits and rafters in the ceiling) and wrapped it around himself, intending, as he said after ripping them off of himself quickly, to mimic “A Christmas tree! But that one shocks like a motherfucker!”
The rest of the band — Mike Haliechuck, Josh Zucker and Ben Cook on guitars (a triple-axe attack) Sandy Miranda on bass and Jonah Falco on drums — fed the incendiary energy in the room with strong, Sex Pistols-infused hardcore punk for just about an hour. When the set began, the room was about two-thirds full. By the time they played their final song — a fitting cover of the Pistols’ “Bodies” — the place was packed with sweaty, panting hipsters and wound-up punk rockers.
While Fucked Up’s primary sonic influence was obviously the Sex Pistols, it didn’t stop there. A friend of mine often speaks of starting a band, or maybe a new genre, that he likes to call “Shoe-gazi” (a combination of “Shoegaze” music, with its noisy, alt-tuned droning and hypnotic melodies, and the band Fugazi, who offer a much more aggressive post punk, “clean hardcore” sound). Fucked Up was a close example of that genre for much of the set. They played songs that were filled with whip-fast, near-standard three chord progressions with added interludes of melodic noise, along with a tad of melody. The result may have come from the luxury of three guitarists, but it was inspired nonetheless. A little bit hardcore and a little bit hypno, it was all steeped in near-hysterical mania.
Exactly my kind of band, and one we could all use more exposure to about now.
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Billy Thieme is a Denver-based writer, an old-school punk and a huge follower of Denver’s vibrant local music scene. Follow Billy’s explorations at , and his giglist at .
Tina Hagerling is a Denver photographer and regular contributor to Reverb. Check out more of her .
