The Fucking Champs - IV
(Drag City)
The Champs, who are apparently now called The Fucking Champs, are the
furthest extreme of bands like Trans Am, Crom-Tech, ZZ-Top, and all those
guitar-heavy metal bands we "love." I don't consider myself a fan of
any of
the above bands, yet I like the Champs a lot. In a music scene devoid
of
ROCK (!) bands, the Champs are a breath of fresh air. The way the
Champs
rock is not the "rip your arms off and use them as drum sticks" type of
rock;
instead it's more like, "Hey, look! We're rocking, check it out!"
In other words,
their riff-heavy guitar rock teeters in the middle of upbeat 80s
lite
metal with virtuoso guitarists and dark heavy rock a la Black Sabbath.
Though, they have a tendency to sway a little closer to the 80s side by
pursuing tangents with a very technical lead part.
Their songs are all instrumental and seem to have somewhere around a
million
different parts. The novelty starts to wear thin after a few songs, so
The
Champs threw in a couple of surprises on this album. The first is the
5th
track, "Lamplighter," which is a beautiful mellow song that uses acoustic
guitar, piano, and mellotron. No metal whatsoever. Also, the 11th
track,
"Lost," is also a very mellow song played with a Roland keyboard. The
dichotomy between the mellow songs and the rockers accent each other
wonderfully. If I hadn't torn the sleeves off of my shirt three weeks
ago,
I would have done it while listening to this album.
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