Fucked Up are no strangers to ambitious projects, but it's hard to imagine anything more ambitious than what they've currently got underway. For decades, Fucked Up have been releasing long, expansive 12" singles dedicated to the years of the Chinese Zodiac calendar. They're finishing it up with a massive new series called Grass Can Move Stones, which will include three Zodiac records and which will be spread out over 10 sides of vinyl. The first of them was Year Of The Goat, which came out in December. Now, they've announced Year Of The Monkey, which is set to arrive in June, and they've shared a whole lot of new music.
All of the records on Grass Can Move Stones fit together into one operatic narrative, with a bunch of guest vocalists coming in to play different characters. (You can read the Year Of The Monkey story here.) Throughout the whole thing, longtime Fucked Up frontman Damian Abraham plays the Monkey, while more recent collaborator Tuka Mohammed has the role of the Good Goat. Year Of The Monkey includes contributions form people like Destroyer's Dan Bejar, Duchess Says' Annie-Claude Deschênes, Crocodiles' Brandon Welchez, Lame's Sally Morreadora, and Carson McHone. This one also has a whole lot of hardcore legends in the mix: Negative Approach/Laughing Hyenas' John Brannon, Circle Jerks/OFF!'s Keith Morris, Converge's Jacob Bannon, Gorilla Biscuits/Quicksand's Walter Schreifels, and Cursed/Left For Dead's Chris Colohan.
Today, Fucked Up have shared two new tracks, the 26-minute "Looking For Heaven And Not Finding It" and the 27-minute "Before Us Tigers Stood." I'm on my first listen right now, and this is obviously a whole lot of music and information to process, but I'm having a great time. These things always take wild musical twists and turns, and this band rocks ferociously enough that it never sounds pretentious or impenetrable. Check out both tracks below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Looking For Heaven And Not Finding It"
02 "Before Us Tigers Stood"
03 "Monkey Meets The Dragon"
04 "Empty Is The Hand"
TOUR DATES:
3/13 - Kingston, ON @ The Broom Factory
3/14 - Ottawa, ON @ 27 Club
3/15 - Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz
3/20 - Toronto, ON @ Cecil House
3/21 - Guelph, ON @ Sonic Hall
3/22 - London, ON @ Palasad Social Bown
3/28 - Liverpool, UK @ District
3/29 - Glasgow, UK @ Mono
3/30 - Bristol, UK @ Exchange
3/31 - Brighton, UK @ Green Door Store
4/01 - London, UK @ The Dome
4/02 - Norwich, UK @ Voodoo Daddy’s
4/03 - Nottingham, UK @ Rock City Beta
4/04 - Manchester, UK @ Manchester Punk Festival
Year Of The Monkey is out 6/6 on Fucked Up's own Hidden World label.
