Album Reviews : Fat Guy Wears Mystic Wolf Shirt – Dys/Closure

It’s hard to not be intrigued when the opportunity to review an album by a band with a name as cool/wacky as Fat Guy Wears Mystical Wolf Shirt comes along. Although it may be quite a mouthful to say out loud, it is certainly one of the more unique band names in recent memory and having not necessarily heard any of the bands material before or knowing what to expect, it was the band name alone that was enough to make me jump at the chance to review this album.

The opening/intro track ‘Dividing Line’ does not really give a clear indication of what is expect on the rest of the album, until the last final closing section, as a slow faded in instrumental section gives way to what the band really is about… Pure chaos! It’s not until the following track Quotidian that the band truly unleashes this though, feeling like a mixture of early Dillinger Escape Plan/Converge, with a distinct Australian twang thrown in, the song is pure mayhem and is played frantically enough to make you actually think as though the band truly wish to break the sound barrier.

Song fly by in the blink of an eye with a flurry of blast beats, off kilter riffs and a machine gun like intensity. Due to their relative short run times, it seems as though the band have a heavy grindcore influence also. ‘Same Again’ changes things up however with a drony guitar based intro; that leads in to a section that brings certain comparisons to bands like Poison the Well to mind and closes out in with a very DIY punk/hardcore fashion.

You’d be forgiven in thinking that the track ‘Instrumental’ was indeed an instrumental only track, but the band again throw another curve ball to the listener as the slow burning, drony intro, kicks in with an intense shouted vocal section, before again returning to how the intro began to round out the track. Tracks like ‘Little Consequence’, ‘Voir Dire’, ‘Home Truths’ and ‘In Defence Of…’ show the band once again at the most rabid and confrontational. ‘Dislocate’ showcases the bands wacky side, with an interesting opening riff that is preceded by some off time riffing, crazed vocals and rounded out by a hardcore section that would make the guys in Trash Talk proud.

While the 15 tracks that compose Dys/Closure may clock in at a total 30 minutes, it is the closing track ‘Within’ that makes up almost half of that time. Even then that is somewhat a false statement, as the track itself only runs for just a shade over 4 minutes, the rest is filled out by silence before the bands punk influence comes to the surface in form a secret song (bands still do this?), which round out the relatively solid release.

Fat Guy Wears Mystical Wolf Shirt, are very much not a one trick pony, nor are they just a funny name. This is a band that clearly wears a multitude of different influences on their sleeves, and manages to use these influences to great effect within the release of their debut album Dys/Closure. I can imagine they are a band that is best viewed live in a small room and I can only hope that when the time comes that I get a chance to see these guys live, that they can bring the same level of intensity as is clearly evident on this release.

Band: Fat Guy Wears Mystical Wolf Shirt
Album: Dys/Closure
Year: 2013
Genre:  Spaz-grind
Label: Art as Catharsis
Origin: Sydney, Australia
facebook.com/fgwmws 

Tracklisting:
1. Dividing Line
2. Quotidian
3. Unrelenting Standards
4. Overcompensate
5. Same Again
6. Ears
7. N Equals
8. Instrumental
9. Little Consequence
10. Voir Dire
11. Dislocate
12. Home Truths
13. Mimic
14. In Defence of…
15. Within

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