FAT WHITE FAMILY Puzzled BRUSSELS With Psychedelic Mood Swings...

FAT WHITE FAMILY – Botanique, Brussels – 12 June 2019

Turn Up The Volume! followed British desperadoes FAT WHITE FAMILY since the day his ears got perplexed by their 2014 debut LP Champagne Holocaust, a controversial piece of drug-fueled mental disorder. Since then I saw these anarchistic misfits going entirely bonkers on stage 3 times. Three unforgettable gigs. Chaotic, insane and baffling. Best fucking live band in the world I wrote back in 2016 (review here). Then key members
Lias Saoudi and Saul Adamczewski took some time off to get clean(er) and making great stuff with other projects (The Moonlandingz and Insecure Men). Now three years and two FWF full lengths (the second was Songs For Our Mothers) later the Family is back. New album SERFS UP is as their two other LP’s half brilliant/half mediocre (meaning they made so far, a one and a 1/2 masterpiece). Yesterday they landed in Brussels to entertain
a sold out hungry club.

HIGHS
* Saul Adamczewski‘s mind-blowing psychedelic guitar play
was off the charts and dominated pretty much the whole concert
* The old jackhammers (like ‘I Am Mark E Smith’, ‘Tinfoil Deathstar’ and
‘Whitest Boy On The Beach‘) still carried the show and were the ones who
made the crowd go sickly bananas
* The set’s closer ‘Is It Raining In Your Mouth?‘ (from the debut LP) was (again)
the indisputable FUCKING INSANE KNOCKOUT HAMMER with frontman Lias
Saoudi‘s vox going totally apeshit beyond normality. One day his head will
explode while screaming his brains out…

LOWS
* Most of the time Saoudi‘s vocals got lost in the guitar-oriented mix.
A damn bloody sin as his voice is ESSENTIAL!
* Most of the new songs are sensuous and smooth and undermine
the feverish flow when played live. Pump them, up, cowboys!
* The new LP’s groovy killer cut ‘Feet‘ got lost in a cacophonic
mess-mix, so its hypnotic swagger got slaughtered. SHAME!

CONCLUSION: Maybe my expectations were too high but this show was half brilliant/half mediocre, half speed/half valium like their albums, but still way much better than many of the current competition. Fix the mix, drop the slow ones or pump them up and become the most challenging and dangerous band in the world again, you motherrockers!

PICS

A wall-of-Saul-psych-guitar-sound…