This month, Fucked Up celebrated the 10th anniversary of David Comes to Life, an 18-song rock opera that arrived with a promotional blitz featuring a movie-style poster campaign and a companion compilation of fictional bands who inhabited the album’s narrative universe. At the time, David seemed to signify the apotheosis of the band’s transformation from hardcore scrappers to art-punk dignitaries. But for all its extravagant packaging, David was also a triumph of economy, harnessing Fucked Up’s power in service of melodic, anthemic tunes that continue to goose their streaming stats to this day. In hindsight, the album was a warm-up exercise for a group that has continued to pursue their ambitions in thrillingly unpredictable ways. And their latest song cycle, Year of the Horse, counts as their most audacious move yet in a career full of them.
Compared to David Comes to Life, Year of the Horse arrived with almost zero fanfare. The music was quietly unveiled in four instalments on Bandcamp, while the lyrics and liner notes were provided via a WeTransfer link. Technically, the release is part of Fucked Up’s long-running Zodiac series, the limited-edition, parallel-universe discography where they’ve entertained their most experimental impulses. But this 94-minute concept album is no mere sideshow curio. In a climate where the Armed have obliterated hardcore’s horizons, Iceage are making gospel records, and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have revived the batshit-bonkers medieval concept album, this is the sound of Fucked Up forcefully reclaiming their status as the most fearless prog-punk band of them all.
Unlike David Comes to Life and 2018’s Dose Your Dreams, Year of the Horse isn’t merely a collection of narratively linked songs. Each of its four epic movements is an intricate and overwhelming assemblage of recurring motifs, lyrical callbacks, and spoken-word scene-setting. The band’s chief architect, Mike Haliechuk, collaborated with Toronto playwright David James Brock to craft a dramatic tale involving a mythical horse named Perceval on the run from an evil wizard king named Sour, en route to her rightful home among the moon and stars. We see much of the action through the eyes of a young girl named Blanche, whose abusive, alcoholic mother belongs to a posse of hunters sent to track down the wayward mare. For all its Games of Thrones cosplay, the album’s underlying themes—animal protection, environmental devastation, dysfunctional families, and the craven, destructive desires of powerful men—root us in a world that feels all too familiar. (And if lines like “vipers waiting in the sand/under the spell of Zazamanc” are liable to fly over your head, you can always follow along with this handy Tweet-by-Tweet plot synopsis.)
There’s another story playing out on Year of the Horse, however, and its main characters are Fucked Up themselves. The saga of the band can seem like one of perpetual conflict, namely between the unrelenting, punx-not-dead growl of frontman Damian Abraham and the high-art aspirations of Haliechuk and drummer/fellow musical director Jonah Falco, while bassist Sandy Miranda and guitarists Josh Zucker and Ben Cook (who sat this one out) dutifully play both sides like kids caught in a custody battle. That tension seemed to reach its breaking point on Dose Your Dreams, where an eclectic musical palette and myriad guest-vocalist cameos threatened to crowd out Abraham, who admitted to questioning his future in the band at the time.
Year of the Horse showcases Fucked Up’s dynamic writ large, with Abraham’s attack routinely disrupted by Haliechuk and Falco’s flights of fancy, which take the form of Godspeed-level overtures, Renaissance Faire folk, spaghetti-western cavalry charges, Tubular Bells-style soundscapes, Bad Seeds-indebted goth pageantry, and wah-wah-drenched psychedelic funk. But the remarkable thing about Year of the Horse is that it continues to push Fucked Up into uncharted territory while deploying Abraham’s blood-curdling roar to its strategic advantage. Like most stories about flying horses, Year of the Horse’s narrative is particularly well-suited to metal, and when Abraham seizes the reins, Fucked Up don’t so much resemble a conflicted punk band as an omnipotent thrash act. (The album is dedicated to two metal gurus lost in the past year—Iron Age guitarist Wade Allison and Power Trip singer Riley Gale—and their influence feels both musical and spiritual.) But Abraham’s eternally ravaged voice bleeds pathos and poignancy as he delivers the recurring motivational mantra that guides Perceval throughout her journey: “Look up at the moon!/Child, you will be home soon!”
Fucked Up were wise to release Year of the Horse in monthly intervals. There is a lot to digest here, and listening in one sitting practically demands an app to track your endurance. But in a sense, the complicated structure actually makes the action easier to follow. Its many shifts propel the narrative, introducing new characters, announcing changes in scenery, or advancing the plot. In between, Haliechuk and Falco give themselves space to refine the sharp songcraft they brought to their electro-mod side project Jade Hairpins, especially on Act One’s dreamy disco-folk odyssey in the “River Suite,” the woozy psych-soul workout in the middle portion of Act Three, and the gorgeous, ‘70s-soft-rock tune that emerges eight minutes into Act Four.
After 90-plus minutes of head-spinning theatrics, Year of the Horse concludes with a celestial ambient symphony guided by Falco’s sunrise-summoning trumpet and the wordless vocals of Julien Baker. The National’s Matt Berninger also checks in toward the end of Act Three with his signature, cigarette-stained monotone. But these indie A-listers ultimately take a backseat to lesser known guest vocalists like Chubby and the Gang bassist Maegan Brooks Mills and the soulful, London-based singer Tuka Mohammed. Their presence is a reminder that Fucked Up isn’t only a means for Haliechuk and Falco to pursue their ever-expanding vision but also a long-standing platform for raising unsung voices. Just as this band once broke the rules of hardcore, they have also reinvented the concept album, transforming the most indulgent exercise in the classic-rock playbook into an egalitarian, community endeavor.
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