Labels: Dark City – Level Plane
Review by: Unknown
Lungfish. This first half of the opening song is the Fiction doing everything they can in their power to summon the mighty Mr Higgs and create a screamo jawn worthy of the Lungfish name. Seriously. A repeated riff/beat with repetitive and mesmerising repetitive screamed/chanted vocals. AWESOME!! Then it crashes into a more typical Fiction jam, stopping and starting all over the place, chaotic and discordant rhythms before ending so abruptly you are thinking it is just a pause in the song. Not fucking bad.
PICK SLIDE!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously, more pick slides in emo. Yes the introduction to Understanding by Design has an opening guitar part reminiscent of some Grade song I can’t remember the name too before a PICK SLIDE then into the song proper. I don’t think this is Dima singing, the vocals are so fucking raw here that either;
1 – He is really fucking pissed off.
2 – He has been smoking 40 a day for the past few months.
3 – Colin or Mark doing the main vocal part instead.
The ending to this song is class, as lyrically fantastic as anything off Life in a Box “…and I will play this game no more.” Fucking right my son.
On the flip we have a Jam cover. Yeah, I was thinking that too… Paul Weller, hippy, student indie wank, yada yada… But wait. If I didn’t know in advance I would have acclaimed this to be one of the best Fiction jams yet! The lyrics are fucking amazing, I think I have not given Mr Weller enough credit… It reads (and sounds) like the chants from some old punk/oi tune.
What you see is what you get
You’ve made your bed, you better lie in it
You choose your leaders and place your trust
As their lies wash you down and their promises rust
You’ll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns
And the public wants what the public gets
But I don’t get what this society wants
I’m going underground, (going underground)
We talk and talk until my head explodes
I turn on the news and my body froze
The braying sheep on my tv screen
Make this boy shout, make this boy scream!
TIGHT! But not all say so, I mention to one of the chaps in work, The Mad Murph, that this band I was listening too did a Jam cover… He comandeered my headphones and his comments were was…
“Fuck sake, what is that? It’s like the Jam meets techno and punk!”
Then after more consideration…
“They’re murder. I like a lot of punk stuff, but the boy sounds like a mongo let loose with a mike.”
Of course when he says punk, he means the Sex Pistols. To be honest, he was probably drunk (as usual) but the sentiment is there… And the best thing is, he is probably coming to the Glasgow show as he doesn’t believe it is real music. AWESOME!!! An old classic of the previous generation updated for the kids of the day. A good job, well done.
This 7″ is on the killer Dark City records and has some lush cover art of some crazy graph/managa/ninja shit… I don’t know what the term for what kind of style it is, but I would call it KICK ASS. This ep is maybe the perfect introduction to the Fiction, go buy now and learn the words in time for the euro tour next month.