Bastards Of Fate

***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.