This Toronto punk band love a good gimmick, from the 12-hour-show they played in 2008, to their 300-pound singer Pink Eyes' love of nude stage-diving. But Fucked Up's real appeal is simple: guitars, three of 'em, though it can seem like thirty. Their fourth disc is an "opera" about a factory yob in 1970s England transformed by his girlfriend's death. Pink's infamous barf-yowl vocal style renders David an opera without much libretto. Still, they still sustain eighty minutes of rousing noise-swirl powerage, like Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade re-imagined by anarchist Yetis. "Realizin' life's a waste," the hero muses, then FU's brutal grandeur turns pain into power.

Listen to "Queen of Hearts":

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“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.