Fucked Up’s Oberon sees the Canadian experimental hardcore punk outfit paring down some of the more elaborate tendencies that have increasingly dominated their output since their second studio album, 2008’s The Chemistry of Common Life. Throughout the four-track EP, the band takes a rare look back at the primordial swamp that birthed them, taking cues from the abrasive sludgecore of acts like Man Is the Bastard and Crossed Out.
The EP’s title track opens with thick doom metal guitars that mellow out during a sparse verse where Damian Abraham’s jagged bark takes on an almost impish quality, reminiscent of Larry Lifeless’s infamous drawl. The eight-minute track’s metal affectations are intriguing at first but its endlessly repeating pattern of stock riffs succeeds mostly as a sensory numbing agent.
Named after the king of fairies, most famous for appearing in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the sluggish “Oberon” delves into the fantastical, its lyrics referencing nocturnal forests, elves, and “twinkling treasures” that are “trapped in trinkets in the ground.” While the throwback quality isn’t entirely without merit, the lyrical focus is, to be frank, ridiculous. Heavy metal’s proclivity toward the fantasy lexicon has always, and often knowingly, flirted with the comical, but Fucked Up decide to play it straight here.
“Strix” picks up the pace with a Melvins-esque intro, before settling for a tuneful but unoriginal half-time groove, augmented by Abraham’s forceful delivery. Faint guitars howl in the background as he rattles off a word jumble of mythology straight out of Ghosts ‘n Goblins: “Demon or creature, being or beast/Malicious flight/An insatiable feast.” Elsewhere, the darkwave synths on “Mashhit” generate a little sonic diversity, but it’s unfortunately buried beneath a trite two-note riff after all but five seconds. And while the track’s chugga-chugga choruses break up the monotony, it continues to plod along for an uneventful six minutes.
Oberon concludes with a cover of Camille Saint-Saën’s “Aquarium” in which Fucked Up transports the Romantic-era composer’s humorous, starry-eyed fantasia to a sinister nightmare realm, warping it almost beyond recognition. If any song on the EP deserved to be longer, it’s this one, but it draws to a close after just three minutes.
Fucked Up, whose highfalutin rock operas and concept albums have made them unlikely indie stars, have long embraced art-rock unpredictability, regularly releasing songs that approach or even exceed the 20-minute mark. On Oberon, though, uncharacteristically modest ambitions fail to translate into something worthy of their reputation.
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