F#@ the Facts!
The Ottawa XPress – August 24, 2006
F#@! The Facts are coming to kill you… musically speaking
Ottawa-Gatineau Grindcore band sheds uniformity for diversity
One listen to any track off Stigmata High-Five, the new Fuck The Facts album, and you’ll understand why people sometimes crap their pants when they’re scared.
This multicultural quartet of girl and boys, which includes lead screamer Mel Mongeon, guitarist Topon Das, drummer Mathieu Vilandré and bassist Steve Chartier, sound like they’re coming to kill you.
Philadelphia’s Relapse Records (the band’s record label) describes the album as “oppressively heavy, metallic riffing to savage grindings and spasmodic changes.” This is a high-powered aural assault that will loosen your bowels and the fillings in your head.
“We wanted to get away from the overproduced digital sound that more metal albums have nowadays,” Das says about the album, which was recorded in Montreal over two weeks in February. “Everything was mic’d and played loud.”
Despite being classified as “grindcore” (think vocal chords doused in Liquid Drano), forget the facts about what to call it ‘cuz they certainly do. How the frig do you think FTF got its name?
“We just do whatever we want,” he says about what musical styles they play. “It’s way easier to get excited about that, instead of putting up all these rules and barriers around yourself and saying ‘I gotta stay within these limits,'” Das says about classifications that often screw with the ability to embrace diversity.
Restrictions are too much like an ex-girlfriend who rationed Das’s heavy metal intake and told him to grow up. And then there was the experience of working at a department store.
“I worked at a Zellers for about five years in shipping and receiving and my breaking point for quitting was when they implemented a uniform for stock guys,” he says. “They were like handcuffs.” To this day he curses the black polyester pants that compromised the blood flow from his brain to his soul like a pair of size 2 spandex leggings on Dee Snyder.
METAL ETHOS
Quit your job, love your friends, burn your TV, never spend more than 10 bucks on a pair of pants, no one is perfect so there’s nothing to worry about – that’s the theme of daily human evolution and discovery that Das uses to describe Stigmata High-Five. It’s also how he and the group choose to live.
“I have a very simple standard of living,” he says, “I don’t have a lot of toys. I have a place to live, food to eat, and a lot of free time to do a lot of shit I like to do,” like playing around with the junk he collects or sitting in the backyard listening to the birds chirp.
“My life isn’t very grindcore at all,” Das says about his personal life off stage. “I like sitting on my patio and drinking coffee and hanging out. I think the majority of the bands we play with are retardedly calm.”
Sure, he may title songs “Carve Your Heart Out,” or “The Wrecking,” but he likes his Miles Davis.
Das says he never had any aspirations of being a “rock star,” playing to crowds of faceless adoring fans. Plus, the title is more for KISS comic book characters than fierce metal talents.
Maybe that’s why Das says he wonders whether or not Ottawa really knows who they are.
“It’s nice when we play a show here, and people show up, and I have no idea who the fuck they are.” If Das thinks he’s got a crowd now, just wait till the band’s feature in an upcoming issue of Metal Maniacs magazine.
In September, FTF will unleash the beast aboard the fifth installation of the Contamination 2006 Tour, which this year features Unearthly Trance and Facedowninshit, with special guest appearances by labelmates Jucifer, Minsk and Ottawa’s Buried Inside. Sponsored by SuicideGirls.com, Decibel Magazine, Lambgoat.com and Jakprints, the tour will take them from Boston right across the United States and back to Ottawa on Wendesday October 4 to play Mavericks.
– Sylvie Hill