Fucked Up

Hidden World

BY Alex MolotkowPublished Oct 1, 2006

Fucked Up are one of the few hardcore bands that couldn’t be described as meatheads or dandies. Being an anomaly in this sense, it figures that their full-length debut on Jade Tree also defies easy classification. The retro punk/hardcore sound that marked their earlier releases and made this one so anticipated is here, but so are a few surprises — for instance, these songs are long (13 tracks in over 72 minutes) and they feature such far-from-aggro Toronto luminaries as Heidi Hazelton and Owen Pallett. Fucked Up are at core music nerds, and it shows — while the open-minded approach will surely alienate some of the very meatheads and dandies whom Fucked Up are not, it’ll be appreciated by punk rock and hardcore fans who love music, too. If you fall into this category, for your sake, ignore the assholes — Hidden World is a really good record. For being ambitious but not tiresome and aggressive but not base, Fucked Up have earned their "good band, period” stripes — one that sticks to their roots without getting stuck there.

What kind of label rigmarole did you guys go through?
Vocalist Pink Eye: We decided we wanted to do a record that was going to be a lot bigger — first of all, it was going to be an LP. We knew we couldn’t put that record out on Deranged, because Deranged said they could give us $2000 to record, and we knew this would cost more — even though I later told Jade Tree it was only going to cost $2000. One day I just went home, looked at every record I had and said, "I’m going to write to every label I can find…” Before, we were talking to Steve Kado and were like "yeah, it would be really cool if Owen Palett played on our record.” He was great.
Guitarist Concentration Camp: He came in and cut one violin line — I’m like, "Oh, cool! Thanks man!” and he was like, "No, I’ve got to do eight more tracks over top of it.” It was neat for us, being really threadbare musicians — and I think it was a breath of fresh air for [producer Jon Drew] to work with a competent musician for an hour…
Pink Eye: We talk about God more on this record than a Christian band.

Are you religious?

Pink Eye: Not at all. Not. At. All.
Guitarist 10,000 Marbles: We ran out of metaphors.
Pink Eye: We exhausted all those metaphors about moshing and friends and the pit. So now we were like, "God, what’s left?”
Concentration Camp: God!
(Jade Tree)

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