Fuck The Facts

Fuck the Facts

By Jill Mikkelson
August 23, 2006



Fuck the Facts Know the Truth

Considering how prolific Topon Das has been under the moniker Fuck the Facts, it’s somewhat surprising the guitarist and mainstay architect kept the project under house arrest for so long. The making of their latest effort, Stigmata High-Five, marks the band’s inaugural experience recording at a professional studio; despite their dense catalogue “this is actually the first time we’ve left our basement to go record somewhere else and do it properly.”

While there’s a first time for everything, many grind fans worldwide have already absorbed Fuck the Facts’ boundless take on all things heavy. Since releasing Discoing the Dead under the FTF banner in 2000, Das has gone through several different line-up changes with various heavy luminaries from the Ottawa-Gatineau area. By staying true to both the Fuck the Facts name and his own chameleonic instincts — basically, disregarding any aspects of the status quo — he’s managed to build a hefty reputation in the heavy music underground, especially as a guy willing to build bridges with other bands. The majority of Fuck the Facts material has shared the spotlight with other heavy bands on split releases; only a couple of FTF-only offerings are found on Das’s lengthy discography. Now Das has a solid band — Mel Mongeon, Mathieu Vilandré and Steve Chartier — that play an equal role in FTF’s perpetual metamorphosis. Not only is Stigmata their debut release for landmark heavy music label Relapse, according to Das it’s the “first proper full-length as a band where it’s all new material we wrote for this record.”

This landmark was the product of a self-reliant ethos, honed by necessity from the beginning of their career. “Before [we] never really had a huge budget to go record. We had to do it by ourselves. We had to learn how to use equipment, and buy some gear and do the best we [could].” These efforts allowed them to cultivate their skills as musicians and songwriters at their own pace and on their own terms. “I look back at some of the recordings we did four years ago and I’m embarrassed about some of the stuff I did, but at the same time I realise it’s a learning experience and if I hadn’t done some of these things, maybe we wouldn’t be at the point we are now. We’re very conscious that we’re a band that learns from our mistakes and from our successes. We embrace that.”

As a result of this DIY ethic and drive to progress, other elements have steadily evolved, especially the lyrics. Das explains that at one point words were essentially just an afterthought. “There were times in the band where we didn’t even write lyrics. We just wrote vocal patterns and maybe a couple of words and as time passed it started to feel kind of empty. Lyrics give an extra life to the music. Now a lot of more the stuff we see around us affects us. It’s just part of growing up, we’re realising.”

Having matured as both musicians and lyricists, they’re still not attempting to be political, nor are they retreating to the morbid fantasies that have been a prominent part of grind’s history. “We don’t have an agenda, we’re not trying to change the world, we’re just trying to say how we see things and how they affect us. We’re not going to write about zombies coming to life and ripping off people’s heads cause it’s just not in us. It’s a way of us expressing ourselves… that’s what’s going to come out.”
- Exclaim Magazine

F#@! the pants
Sylvie Hill



F#@! The Facts are coming to kill you... musically speaking


Ottawa-Gatineau Grindcore band sheds uniformity for diversity

One listen to any track off Stigmata High-Five, the new Fuck The Facts album, and you'll understand why people sometimes crap their pants when they're scared. This multicultural quartet of girl and boys, which includes lead screamer Mel Mongeon, guitarist Topon Das, drummer Mathieu Vilandré and bassist Steve Chartier, sound like they're coming to kill you.
Philadelphia's Relapse Records (the band's record label) describes the album as "oppressively heavy, metallic riffing to savage grindings and spasmodic changes." This is a high-powered aural assault that will loosen your bowels and the fillings in your head.

"We wanted to get away from the overproduced digital sound that more metal albums have nowadays," Das says about the album, which was recorded in Montreal over two weeks in February. "Everything was mic'd and played loud."

Despite being classified as "grindcore" (think vocal chords doused in Liquid Drano), forget the facts about what to call it 'cuz they certainly do. How the frig do you think FTF got its name?

"We just do whatever we want," he says about what musical styles they play. "It's way easier to get excited about that, instead of putting up all these rules and barriers around yourself and saying 'I gotta stay within these limits,'" Das says about classifications that often screw with the ability to embrace diversity.

Restrictions are too much like an ex-girlfriend who rationed Das's heavy metal intake and told him to grow up. And then there was the experience of working

at a department store.

"I worked at a Zellers for about five years in shipping and receiving and my breaking point for quitting was when they implemented a uniform for stock guys," he says. "They were like handcuffs." To this day he curses the black polyester pants that compromised the blood flow from his brain to his soul like a pair of size 2 spandex leggings on Dee Snyder.

METAL ETHOS

Quit your job, love your friends, burn your TV, never spend more than 10 bucks on a pair of pants, no one is perfect so there's nothing to worry about - that's the theme of daily human evolution and discovery that Das uses to describe Stigmata High-Five. It's also how he and the group choose to live.

"I have a very simple standard of living," he says, "I don't have a lot of toys. I have a place to live, food to eat, and a lot of free time to do a lot of shit I like to do," like playing around with the junk he collects or sitting in the backyard listening to the birds chirp.

"My life isn't very grindcore at all," Das says about his personal life off stage. "I like sitting on my patio and drinking coffee and hanging out. I think the majority of the bands we play with are retardedly calm."

Sure, he may title songs Carve Your Heart Out, or The Wrecking, but he likes his Miles Davis.

Das says he never had any aspirations of being a "rock star," playing to crowds of faceless adoring fans. Plus, the title is more for KISS comic book characters than fierce metal talents.

Maybe that's why Das says he wonders whether or not Ottawa really knows who they are.

"It's nice when we play a show here, and people show up, and I have no idea who the fuck they are." If Das thinks he's got a crowd now, just wait till the band's feature in an upcoming issue of Metal Maniacs magazine.

In September, FTF will unleash the beast aboard the fifth installation of the Contamination 2006 Tour, which this year features Unearthly Trance and Facedowninshit, with special guest appearances by labelmates Jucifer, Minsk and Ottawa's Buried Inside. Sponsored by SuicideGirls.com, Decibel Magazine, Lambgoat.com and Jakprints, the tour will take them from Boston right across the United States and back to Ottawa on Wendesday October 4 to play Mavericks.

- Ottawa Xpress

Stigmata High-Five

This is a wildly careening barrage of berserker heavyosity punctuated by ripping lead guit-box shred and diminutive vocal tigress Mel Mongeon’s alarming propensity for inhuman larynx power while the drums sound as though they are on fire and falling down a flight of stairs. Taken From The Nest is full of down stabbed wizardry and a soothing blast beat groove that quickly succumbs to haunting dissonance, a challenging listen that may induce night terrors while What’s Left Behind is a double-time burner that punctures the stratosphere (and yer delicate eardrums!) with dexterity and aplomb. FTF are the pride of Ottawa’s underground and now mad genius Topon Das has realized the maniacal dream he’s carefully crafted over the past 6 years, fusing grind and death, ambience and catharsis into a highly chaotic and musically disparate slab of raw metal, the sonic equivalent of all yer teeth falling outta yer head at the same time, only louder. 4/5
(Ottawa Citizen - Shawn Jam Hill)
- Ottawa Citizen

Ottawa’s purveyors of grindcore, Fuck The Facts, have finally landed a deal with Relapse Records that allows them to crawl out of the sub-underground and record an album to capture their spastic, vicious sonic assault properly for the first time. That album is the brilliantly-titled STIGMATA HIGH-FIVE and Fuck The Facts’ notorious dabblings in experimental noise and spine-splitting changes in tempo still remain fairly lo-fi in the grand scheme of things, but the band has never sounded better than on this collection of seven tracks. A new rhythm section has been employed since 2003’s BACKSTABBER ETIQUETTE, welcoming Steve Chartier and Mathieu Vilandré on bass and drums, respectively. Mel Mongeon screams and roars like a tortured animal and Topon Das’ spastic riffing lurches along however the injections of melody to the groove and chaotic reels is very unique. Ion Dissonance does it but their hardcore background is very different from Fuck The Facts’ roots. Cephalic Carnage would be a closer parallel. Musical diversity and grindcore are not two terms usually associated with one another but Fuck The Facts does just that and more on STIGMATA HIGH-FIVE. “La Derniere Image” (French for “The Last Picture”) rumbles along with a blasting death metal groove before slowing temporarily for a sweetly melodic passage. The band deftly weaves between tempos, starting and stopping on a dime, with Mongeon even handling a spoken word section between belched-out vitriolic wretches. “The Wrecking” starts out with a bouncy groove before launching into a frenzied abyss of double bass, blasts and mind-blowing technical riffs. Das’ squealing riffs on the brutal grind gem, “Carve Your Heart Out,” are just as impressive. The band experiments with some sonic distortion at the end of the track that will leave many people thinking their copy of STIGMATA HIGH-FIVE is faulty. The mid-tempo groove of “Taken From The Nest” is interspersed with the usual grind mayhem but the melodic guitar that finishes off the track really shows Fuck The Facts is more than the usual bunch of skull-crushing punters who inflict their chaos upon grind fans. For all the experimentation of those tracks, the flailing insanity of “The Sounds of Your Smashed Head” (originally written back in 2003) is pure, unadulterated grind, delivering beatdown after beatdown in the form of dizzying riffs, Vilandré’s unrelenting blasts and Mongeon’s bruising vocal attack. The progressive, almost jazzy, feel to Vilandré’s drums and Chartier’s bass are positively infectious on the nine-minute, “Dead In The Ruins of Your Own City.” A foreboding ambient middle section bubbles below the surface before a slow, dirge-like doom-y conclusion wraps up the song. Slow…doomy…progressive…not exactly typical adjectives used to describe the music of a grindcore band but Fuck The Facts is not just any grindcore band. Their expert use of start/stop tempos, melodic breaks and other unorthodox (for the genre) flourishes set Fuck The Facts apart, reserving themselves a place in their own corner of grindcore’s hall. STIGMATA HIGH-FIVE is a new chapter in the band’s career, one that sees them stepping into a new realm of production values, distribution and exposure thanks to Relapse, as well as vastly-improved songwriting and musicianship. The underground is in their rearview mirror as Fuck The Facts is on the road to the next level, so buckle up for the ride. 4/5
(Metal-Rules.com) - metal-rules.com

My only previous encounters with this band was when I heard some of their material on split releases with the likes of SKODA 120 and KASTRAT and back then this band had that typical Grind/Noise sound, creating brief bursts of chaos that strongly reminded me of DROGHEDA. After that the band kind of fell off my radar a bit, but now since they are signed to Relapse I decided to check them out once more. With a solid, forward-looking label behind them, FUCK THE FACTS really pushed out the boat with this one – yes this is still noisy Grind, but there are tons of Death, Black, Art-Rock and even Power Metal (!) touches here that are incorporated into the band’s trademark sound quite flawlessly. The result is a thoroughly engrossing listen from start to finish and surely this is the album that will push this band to new heights. After the very experimental (a word you’ll hear a lot when discussing this album) 7 minute opener I was bouncing off the walls – this track is an epic yet the flow is so good that it flew by in what felt like two minutes! “The Wrecking” is another favorite of mine, combining savage Death Metal with slight Power Metal touches (check out those leads right after the opening barrage of blasts) and even some Black Metal screams near the end! Songs like “Carve Your Heart Out” and “The Sound Of Your Smashed Head” are a bit on the filler side, but thank Satan we have the closer “Dead In The Ruins Of Your Own City” right around the corner! Now this is an unorthodox Grind classic if I’ve ever heard one!! You get everything in this track: very prominent cymbal work, melodies that impress with an equal Death/Black sheen and even some very gloomy Doom passages towards the end. The band combines this disparate array of styles on almost every song, but they pull it off admirably and quite unlike anyone else in this field. Boring or stagnant this is certainly not!! If you are into bands like CRYPTOPSY, DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, PIG DESTROYER and DÂM, then you should definitely check out this monster of an album. I know we’re supposed to fuck the facts, but let me provide you with one: this band is on a mission for world devastation. Are you with or against them?
(The Metal Observer - Neil) - The Metal Observer