VI, the fourth full-length album by instrumental heavy metallers The Fucking Champs and their first after two collaborative albums with Trans Am, mercifully justifies its existence with a new approach.
Though The Fucking Champs’ sound can be boiled down to heaps of guitar and pounding percussion, the power trio of Tim Green (ex-Nation of Ulysses), Phil Manley, and Tim Soete handles a variety of instruments (including baritone guitar, bass guitar, piano, and synths) to create a full sound.
Much of their material involves endless chugging chord progressions that trample up and down octaves and across key signatures, often sweetened with dueling harmonic bursts. Their progressions can be exhausting after only a few songs, as The Champs only come up for air for the occasional lead, stately ode to classical composers, or keyboard interlude. Though VI doesn’t abandon these methods, the occasions when they do stray from their well-beaten path can be rewarding.
The Champs’ style of unrestrained riffing has always been part homage to metal pioneers Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Van Halen. On VI, the band broadens the scope of its adoration to include classic rock bands.
The melancholy atmosphere of “Dolores Park,” conjured by pastoral acoustic guitar lines and ambrosial synth air, pays equal tribute to King Crimson and Led Zeppelin. “Earthen Sculpture” has the swagger of Thin Lizzy and the technical excellence of a Rush single when it’s not standard Champs fare.
VI also finds The Champs making better use of their haunting synth interludes as well as trying on the hats of 4-20-friendly stoner metal (“A Forgotten Chapter In the History of Ideas”) and epic post-rock (tremendous closer “Column of Heads”).
– Steve Mizek
The Fucking Champs (Drag City)