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Jun 8, 2011They're also bracingly potent and screamingly vital; David Comes To Life is the work of a band openly aspiring to be great, and pulling it off.
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Jun 6, 2011Fucked Up's grand ambition may one day be their downfall, but right now it has produced an intricate, rewarding beast of an album, their magnum opus.
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Jun 6, 2011Fucked Up actively refuse any sort of definition, and David Comes To Life proves that they're more than capable of shouldering that burden.
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Jun 13, 2011What sets Fucked Up's new album aside from their previous records though is the accessibility and bright tone throughout.
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Jun 9, 2011In the end, the greatest testament to David Comes to Life is how it feels like there's more and more to it, even when you're already on sensory overload as it is.
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Jun 6, 2011One brilliant rock song follows another, defiantly leaden in construction but stalwart in performance. Rarely does such simple rock sound so satisfying.
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Jun 6, 2011What Fucked Up have done here is to take what they've been honing for the past 10 years and go one better, adding lush female vocals and celestial, electronica-inspired effects in an effort to constantly titillate and surprise.
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Jun 6, 2011It's one of the most overly complicated hard-rock records of the past ten years. It's also one of the best.
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Jun 6, 2011In "Turn the Season," "Ship of Fools" and "Life in Paper," the guitars suggest a torrent busting through a dam, sweeping away all in its path. It's an exhilarating, engulfing sound that might've been better served by a more concise album. But then F Up never has been much for holding itself back.
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Jun 8, 2011David Comes to Life is absolutely worth the commitment, a convincing demonstration of what can happen when a band works without limitations.
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Jun 29, 2011The eighteen tracks and eighty minutes presented here don't hold a candle to 2008′s The Chemistry of Common Life but I truly admire the tenacity of this outfit to push on toward such a lofty venture.
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Jun 28, 2011It's a true testament to the band that its windswept glory-rock stays exhilarating for nearly 80 minutes.
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Kerrang!Jun 24, 2011Guitars buzz and chime, melodies uproot from the dirt and stand tall; the sum total being tan indefinable yet fascinating modern day rock opera that is as rewarding as it is unique. [4 Jun 2011, p.52]
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Q MagazineJun 20, 2011Toronto six-piece deliver a killer concept album. [July 2011, p. 113]
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Jun 9, 2011The lyric sheet is essential to get any measure of the undoubtedly high-concept narrative, but the music is some of their most approachable and enjoyable yet, with extra depths to be plumbed if you so desire.
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Jun 9, 2011Musically speaking, it's a perfectly logical progression from Fucked Up's second album, 2008's The Chemistry Of Common Life, which itself strode recognisably onwards from their 2006 studio debut Hidden World.
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Jun 8, 2011To hear the band members tell it, David Comes To Life is the record they've been working up to for the past 10 years, a grandiose statement that closes off the first chapter of Fucked Up's history. It's anybody's guess as to how they'll follow something like this, but we're already excited for chapter two.
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Jun 6, 2011David ain't the kind of thing you want to hear every day, but it's the kind of thing someone is going to play every day for a month. Or months. Whatever it takes to come back to life.
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Jun 6, 2011Without a doubt, the hooky riffs and unforgiving pace make it a fantastic rock album in itself, but only Fucked Up would chose to play out a tragedy to this soundtrack.
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Jun 6, 2011The 18 songs on the album are all in the heavily layered, chamber-hardcore style established on Chemistry of Common Life, but Fucked Up is taking the idea to the furthest reaches, and somehow pulling it off.
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Jun 6, 2011There's no doubting the commitment in delivery though, with solid musical cohesion and a thrusting triple-guitar assault that has an astounding clarity and is expertly choreographed.
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Jun 6, 2011The missteps of narrative are easily paved over by the energy, power, and fun of the music. As such, rather than feeling constrained or overwrought, this is a concept album where you can forget the concept for a while and just dive right in.
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UncutJun 3, 2011Two albums on and they're still assembling a uniquely imaginative mythology. [Jul 2011, p.82]
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MojoJun 3, 2011Toronto punk sextet's third LP is an epic soundtrack. [July 2011, p. 104]
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Jun 3, 2011David Comes to Life contains plenty of evidence that Fucked Up is still one of the strangest and most inventive guitar rock bands on the planet.
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Jun 3, 2011Behold their evolution: while 2008's 'The Chemistry Of Common Life' album was drenched in religious connotations and spiritual euphemisms, this time, their rock opera about romance and death at an English lightbulb factory (seriously) is theatrics personified, taking listeners on a quest while still abiding by their precious DIY ethic.
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Alternative PressJun 3, 2011Fucked Up's pop sensibilities remain impressively omnipresent, validating the hype. [Jul 2011, p.107]
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Jun 16, 2011The narrative of David is not quite as cohesive as Fucked Up think it is, the lyrics too cliché, but if writing a rock opera was the impetus required to push them to produce an album as gloriously overblown as David Comes to Life, then it's worth a thousand dead Veronicas and even more mopey dorks to mourn them.
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Jun 8, 2011It is an album based very clearly on a concept, an overall construct. Within that, Fucked Up once again morph themselves, moving further away from anything you could call hardcore (save Damian Abraham's voice).
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Jun 8, 2011Sonically, this is Fucked Up's cleanest album to date.
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Jun 15, 2011Even if you can't quite make out all the words to David's story, it still plays like a thriller.
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Jun 7, 2011Fucked Up's real appeal is simple: guitars, three of 'em, though it can seem like thirty.
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Jun 16, 2011Between the overlong, overstuffed songs and arrangements, ridiculous album concept and lyrical conceit, there's no room left for the vicious, hurtling energy that first impressed me on Hidden World's best songs.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 27 out of 37
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Mixed: 9 out of 37
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Negative: 1 out of 37
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Jun 30, 2011
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Feb 4, 2020
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May 10, 2012