FUCK THE FACTS

After a prolific run of releases, Canada's FUCK THE FACTS landed a much-deserved deal with Relapse and released 2006's "Stigmata High-Five", a grinding metallic album featuring Topon Dos' nails-on-chalkboard riffs and Melanie Mongeon's scathing growls. Always a band with peculiar album titles, one wonders what the title "Disgorge Mexico" is all about. Most would assume that it is at least in part in reference, tongue-in-cheek or otherwise, to the manner in which California's DISGORGE and Mexico's DISGORGE distinguish themselves. Dos' explanation of the writing of "Disgorge Mexico" sheds some light on it: "'Disgorge Mexico' was created during a 14-day road trip from our home base in Gatineau, Canada to the borderlines of Mexico and back. Songs were pieced together from jam tapes that have been collected since the early days of FUCK THE FACTS, rehearsed and constructed in various basements/stores/warehouses/wherever people were kind enough to let us use during our trip and then finally disgorged back onto Canadian soil beginning the summer of 2007." Hence, "Disgorge Mexico". The process worked, as "Disgorge Mexico" is another worthy release on par with "Stigmata High-Five".

The music of FUCK THE FACTS has always been associated in one way or the other with grindcore. There is, in fact, a lot of grinding and blasting going on with "Disgorge Mexico", but grindcore as a description of the album is only accurate to a limited extent. The one constant throughout the album is the ferocity of the attack, with Dos busting out another truckload of sandpaper riffs and Mathieu Vilandre absolutely destroying his drum kit. What the band does well is arranging songs in a way that keeps the album moving by shifting pace and incorporating a range of colors and textures, though never veering far from the skull-cracking approach. "State of Panic" is the track that jumps out around the mid-section of the album, its riff/groove straight out of the southern/sludge metal play book. The groove on this bad boy is guaranteed to get that headbang going every time, before you even realize what you're doing. But it is on "The Storm" and the nine-minute "Apathy is a Karma Killer" that the act's skill in crafting compositions with depth and personality is heard by changing up, twisting about, and mixing colors.

Finally, the tones, rawness, and variety in the riff department is one of the reasons that some of the music on "Disgorge Mexico", as well as "Stigmata High-Five", shares similarities with CONVERGE. Certain segments even recall the fury of MISERY INDEX. In short, if you dug "Stigmata High-Five", then you'll dig "Disgorge Mexico".