There's something both admirable and daunting in
Fucked Up's stubborn refusal to take the simple path or stay in one place with their music. As befits the world's smartest hardcore band,
Fucked Up insist on raising the stakes each time they release an album, and given how wildly ambitious 2008's
The Chemistry of Common Life, 2011's
David Comes to Life, and 2018's
Dose Your Dreams were, it begs the question of just where they can go next. The group's ongoing "Zodiac Series" has given them safe spaces to experiment outside of their "regular" releases, but while they've previously been EPs or extended singles, 2021's
Year of the Horse is a truly epochal achievement, a 93-minute album in four parts with each movement containing enough sonic diversity and lyrical complexity to fill an LP by itself.
Year of the Horse is a grand-scale concept album that trades in themes of magic, war, fantasy, and political and social allegory as the churning music shifts gears from into-the-wind punk to metal-style thunder, atmospheric folk, cool electronic pulsation, orchestral majesty, and countless stops in between.
Year of the Horse was initially released digitally in four volumes, and listening to them all back to back is sometimes dazzling and just as often exhausting;
Fucked Up's concept albums have been glorious musically yet increasingly hard to follow from a narrative standpoint, and
Year of the Horse is truly a release where you can't tell the players without a scorecard. After a while, trying to keep up with the story falls to the wayside as you simply let the tidal waves of sound crash over your head. No other punk band (and very few bands period) would demand this level of engagement from their listeners when they release an album, and on the first few spins,
Year of the Horse insists the audience bite off more than they can chew, which wasn't quite the case even on the mammoth
Dose Your Dreams. However, if
Year of the Horse is overstuffed, it manages to be so without seeming wasteful; this is an epic that's not big for its own sake, but the work of artists who are willing to challenge themselves even more than they challenge their audience. While its audacity is impressive enough, what's even more remarkable is how much of it works, and how seamlessly
Fucked Up can weave together the endless variety of ingredients that comprise
Year of the Horse. Don't go into this expecting casual listening (a notion
Fucked Up's fans got used to years ago), but if you're willing to meet this music on its own terms, it's impossible not to be dazzled by it. ~ Mark Deming
