If you looked at the cover of Fat White Family’s Champagne Holocaust album you could be forgiven for thinking they were some insane grindcore band with like thirty three fans. It features like a weird cow pig thing holding a blood splattered meat cleaver and axe whilst his impressively sized penis hangs below which would be a perfect portrait for any shock grind band. However, upon listening to their debut album you realise Fat White Family are not a grindcore band, way off! In fact, after spinning their album countless times I’m not really sure what they are… rare nowadays!
There is a certain level of buzz sweeping around London about this band… people mentioning how skinny they are, how they survive by squatting around the East End and their disturbing video for ‘Cream of the Young’. The Fat White Family buzz strongly hints that they don’t just pretend to be weirdos… they are weirdos. Champagne Holocaust is only just going in to circulation, they are already being tagged with a ‘cult band’ label so does the listening experience justify the hype? That’s a big fat family yes!
The opening track ‘Auto Neutron’ kicks in like a lo-fi garage number, it makes you feel like you are getting intoxicated on many levels in the coolest club in town. The lyrics are dark, the singer is mumbling but you can hear him saying something about “burning your shit down”. It’s a gem of a track, a glorious mix between garage rocker Ty Segall and psychadelic rockers Goat.
We then move onto ‘Raining In Your Mouth’ which could easily be a completely different band… almost Butthole Surfers like before we launch into ‘Who Shot Lee Oswald’ a stripped down number on a banjo with repetitive yet insane lyrics and not a million miles from sound like Ween. That’s pretty much the story for the entire album, it’s a quirky little journey across many different musical styles... Stooges style punk, bluegrass, even indie (good indie)! It’s all packaged up beautifully and heavily armed with both charm and darkness making it a well-balanced delicacy. There’s numbers that will make you dance, make you think, make you trip and just put a big fat family sized family smile on your face (sorry I’ll stop doing that now).
I never listen to new bands and hope they were ‘the next big thing’ but I kind of feel this about these gents. Champagne Holocaust feels like the real deal and with the mainstream music scene is as crushingly boring as it’s ever been, there has been no better time for a genuinely nasty band (who at one point mention a 15 year old girl’s cunt) to come and give the mainstream a hard kick in its deserving arse!
