Genre: Punk Rock Opera
Rating: 12

Track List:
Act One: Love, then tragedy strikes the town.
1. “Let Her Rest” 3:23
2. “Queen of Hearts” 4:36
3. “Under My Nose” 3:29
4. “The Other Shoe” 4:57
5. “Turn the Season” 4:02

Act Two: David loses Veronica, and then himself, as he succumbs to guilt and despair.
6. “Running On Nothing” 4:46
7. “Remember My Name” 5:09
8. “A Slanted Tone” 3:40
9. “Serve Me Right” 3:49

Act Three: Another character is revealed, putting the responsibility for Veronica’s death into question.
10. “Truth I Know” 4:33
11. “Life In Paper” 4:38
12. “Ship of Fools” 4:02
13. “A Little Death” 4:36

Act Four: A revelation from Vivian sheds more light on Veronica’s death; Octavio and Vivian explain their motives, and David is reborn.
14. “I Was There” 3:19
15. “Inside a Frame” 4:18
16. “The Recursive Girl” 3:34
17. “One More Night” 5:36
18. “Lights Go Up” 5:30

The first of two punk rock opera’s featuring recurring character David Eliade. The latter being 2018’s Dose Your Dreams. Fucked Up takes the usually self indulgent and often pretentious concept of the rock opera and infuse it with pragmatic sincerity and the raw energy of hardcore. This is not a hardcore album, it’s hardcore-ish, and that is fine because it’s really, really good.

The story:

It’s a love story between David Eliade, a worker in a lightbulb factory and Veronica Boisson, an activist set against the backdrop of late 70’s or early 80’s England. The story is told by an unreliable meta-narrator named Octavio St. Laurent who eventually finds himself involved in a struggle with the character David. After Veronica dies in a botched bomb explosion set by her and David in the factory as a protest, David unsurprisingly blames himself for her death.

This is until he meets Veronica’s friend, Vivian Benson, who tells David not to trust the narration. A struggle between the narrator and David for control of the story sheds light on Veronica’s death and David learns that Octavio caused her death. Octavio admits this but says in his defense that it is only because he has been cast as the villain in the story. David, possibly coming to terms with the fact that he and the narrator are simply characters in a strange story, decides to return to the factory to live out the story again and again.

Besides Dose Your Dreams, the convoluted meta-story of David Eliade can be found in the songs ‘David Comes to Life’ off of 2006’s Hidden World and the 2007 single ‘David Christmas’. David is also the supposed manager of the band in real life.

Favourite tracks: ‘Queen of Hearts’, ‘Under My Nose’, ‘Turn The Season’, ‘The Other Shoe’ & ‘Running on Nothing’.

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