What an opportune time for a Fucking Champs release. Seems every Joe Indie's been losing their shit over some record with guitars that sound like they're playing violin parts, employing homophony, polyphony, counterpoint, and all those other concepts taught in any high school's state-mandated music appreciation class. Artists ranging from Mastodon to Ratatat to Marnie Stern have whetted the indie audience's appetite for tight-yet-intricate axe compositions, and the veteran Champs, composed of two indie-metal lifers and ex-Nation of Ulysses guitarist Tim Green, make a case for the old guard on VI.
In the past, this portion of a Fucking Champs review would be reserved for prog-rock apologies/pleas aimed at indie fans repulsed by shifting time signatures, modes, and advanced guitar playing techniques. However, with the number of ambitious, technically adroit albums released and praised today (c.f. Ys, Welcome to the Black Parade, Friend and Foe, etc.), you'd possess a lot of gall to dismiss the Champs as pretentious or esoteric. VI strips down the prog to an ingestible 2-guitar/drums setup, forgoing many of the spacey, Yes-influenced synths and flare of previous releases and instead narrowing its focus on more immediate hooks and transitions.
"The Loge" kicks the album off on an accessible note, stomping through a series of melodic patterns not inherent to metal guitar but pretty ass-kicking all the same. Whereas a lot of math rock tries to obscure its nerdiness with stygian minor modes and excess distortion, this opener contains equal parts pomp and fist-pump, even during its palm-muted grinder of a bridge. The wistful "Spring Break" boasts its share of metal emasculating as well, bookending its middle rawk-out section with an airy guitar opening and carefree closing solo. The brief transitional tracks particularly flash a lot of nuanced ideas, such as the stately "Abide With Me" or "Champs Fanfare", both potential national anthems for countries that don't yet exist, or the eerily calm "Insomnia", one of the few instances of synths on the album.
Of course, the threat of novelty still haunts the Fucking Champs, and with the recent explosion of Nintendo-core bands, that threat feels more real than ever. The intro of "Fozzy Goes to Africa" sounds like the soundtrack for a pixelated, 8-bit kid embarking on his first RPG journey, while the remainder of the song stagnates on a seemingly never-ending meat-and-potatoes AOR riff. This prosaic plug-and-chug songwriting pops up in several other tracks, hardly tempered by the baroque King Crimson knockoff "Dolores Park" or the band's best stab at Xanaxed Madchester, "That Crystal Behind You? (Are You Channeling)". Still, VI serves as a fun changeup both to today's more doomsday prog-metal and hipster-approved electroclash fugues. The album, while technically proficient, packs enough surprises and raw energy to avoid rote Yngwie Malmsteen-esque "songwriting" tropes. Don't be surprised if this heady offering leaves you less eager to fire up your lighter and crowd surf as it does to fire up your TI-83 and take the math portion of the SATs.
