Categories
Live Reviews

The Fucking Champs

Todd
Lords
The Garage, London
07.12.05

Anyone who has lost faith in UK music would do well to pay tonight’s support acts a visit sometime soon. Both Lords and Todd are proof that it’s not all weak indie rock, emo or crud metal out there at the moment, there are actually some people doing genuinely thrilling things with the ye olde’ guitar, bass and drums format, starting off with Lords; a ferocious trio based in the capitol that approach their sonic assaults in the same frame of mind as Steve Albini.

Dry, tight and angular, they throw out twisted shapes of molten rock ‘ala Shellac, combined with the raw rock n’roll strut of (early) Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and they get the night off to an ear-screeching start.

Todd, again from London, specialise in an equally ferocious form of extreme noise terror that is lose and slack but equally as vicious as Lords. Their style of bile and noise harks back to early experiments in sludge and noise heralded by the likes of Killdozer, Tad and The Melvins and best of all, they are blessed with a frontman in Craig Clouse that has the stage presence to push Todd’s noise to new levels of insanity. By the end of the set he’s out in the crowd, dangerously flaying a mic-stand above his head as he bumps psychotically around the crowd, bashing into people and generally trying to rile things up. It works a treat and Todd make an instant and lasting impression upon the audience tonight.

The Fucking Champs feature Tim Green, ex-mover and shaker from hip Washington D.C. punks Nation Of Ulysses; not that you should use that as any indication as to what The Fucking Champs actually sound like.

The noise they make couldn’t be further away from the post-hardcore-punk sounds of Dischord Records. No, The Fucking Champs are rock. Rock as nature intended, carved out of stone by the likes of Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin.

The genius of the Champs, however, is they take the template of rock and put their own deranged twist on things, casting spot-on Thin Lizzy style twin-lead guitar solos over a relentless math-rock time signature. Their music never stops moving and evolving, changing and shifting and making the people who wanna dance curse the band’s inability to stay in one place at one time. And all of this is done with an attitude that is a million miles away from the more pretentious aspects of art-rock. The Fucking Champs are not ironic. They play like they believe passionately in rock music but are talented and clever enough to make it different to everyone else. In short, The Fucking Champs rock.

James Sherry

www.thefuckingchamps.com for all info.