***THE BASTARDS OF FATE sound like nothing you’ve ever heard before, a synthesis of everything that’s come before them, and a preview of everything that’s coming after. Their first two albums won praise from places like The Big Takeover (‘an uncompromising onslaught of demented pop’) and Magnet (‘walks the line between visionary and downright freaky. It’s a beautiful cacophony.’), but now that they’re on a real label, one that isn’t a weekend hobby, The Bastards of Fate are finally going to get the attention they deserve. With songs about the struggle to be human in an inhuman world, delivered through a combination of humor & dread that rings true on every level, Suck The Light Out is a sonic feast, a lyrical extravaganza, an album that goes where others are too cool to tread. It’s where science meets love, where suicide meets hope.
LP $17.75
02/24/2017
***The revolution starts here. You didn’t think anything new—that is to say, genuinely new, a paradigm shift—was going to come out of Brooklyn did you? At this point? Tucked into the mountains of southwest Virginia, Roanoke is a city of shadows and mist. THE BASTARDS FO FATE didn’t move there to become famous—they were born there, to grow up obscure. But as the release of their second album, Vampires are Real and Palpable, approaches, the band’s reputation continues to spread like a well-executed piece of vandalism. The Bastards make music for the 21st century, and possibly—if we make it that far as a species—the 22nd, It’s a cluttered screaming cacophony of connected isolation. ‘Winter of Our Discontent’ may be the bleakest, most emotionally wrecked thing you’ll hear all year, and ‘Own It’ might be the funniest—funny the way Kafka is funny, and bleak the way Bataille is bleak. Or is it the other way around? I guess we’re trying to say that Bastards write like novelists, that they sing with the soul of a choir, and they sound like nothing else on earth. Vampires is a darker, altogether more desperate affair than 2012’s Who’s a Fuzzy Buddy, sounding less like a studio project and more like a band. It captures the visceral energy of their live shows—a chaotic mess of lightbulbs and screaming. Vampires laughs in the face of its demons; it scowls & weeps when confronted with angels.
LP $14.00
06/03/2014
CD $9.25
06/03/2014
***The year was 2006. DOUG CHEATWOOD—grocer by day, innkeep by night, musician perpetual—assembled his dream team. BENJAMIN PUGH as rhythm guitarist extraordinaire. CAMELLIA DELK on synthesizer and heart strings, and JASON WELLZ as sinister bass-smith. Tying the package together: the wild rhythms of DOUGH SHELOR’s pin-point percussion. A quintet of such skill seemed unstoppable, and yet Fate conspired against the Bastards from their inception. Their shows would end in mechanical catastrophe. Their wild antics would get them banned from popular venues. Their practice space burned to cinders, destroying their equipment. Their new practice space was set upon by bandits who swiped the very nails from the walls. It seemed as though a shadowy, malevolent force had THE BASTARDS OF FATE in its eye and would stop at nothing to see them rent asunder. And yet tragedy did not stop or slow The Bastards; if anything, it informed their unique musical sensibility. And now, at the end of their Road of Trials, we find their debut album. Who’s a Fuzzy Buddy? represents The Bastards of Fate at the top of their game, twelve tracks of catchy melodies, shrieking vocals, sonic weirdness. One cannot describe their sound accurately as all comparison fails; they have created a New Sound that is not of this generation of music, nor perhaps even of this plane of existence. You can listen to the album now, or you can listen to its influence in the future. The Bastards of Fate will not be denied.
LP $14.00
05/22/2012
CD $12.25
05/22/2012