Bastards Of Fate

***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.