Fuck You / Presentation

Let me be blunt: Fastowl’s only claim to celebrity, or indeed, uniqueness, is its members’ rather effective promotional tactics on the forum of this very website. Many of us had our interests piqued by these tactics and ended up owning copies of the split between aforementioned grind band and their thrash metal neighbours, Wretches. After a good number of listens to this split however, I can safely say that the hype far outweighs the actual music involved.

This is particularly accurate when analyzing Fastowl’s portion of this split. Their three songs, which together make up a grand total of about two and a half minutes, are rather forgettable. This is home-made grind with absolutely no distinguishing factors: nothing memorable ever happens during the short time allotted to this band, which only seems to be here for the heck of it (this impression is solidified by song titles like Gay Ice Age). The drumming is competent (and the absence of a drum machine is indeed commendable) but the guitar work is noisy and unremarkable and the vocals consist in little more than rather random screams, grunts and rasps. Overall, this exercise in jamming is over before you know it and leaves one wondering “Wait, what just happened here?” since it’s unlikely you’ll remember anything of consequence even after multiple listens. Again, this is not actively irritating, just completely uninteresting and not something I come back to when I’m in the mood for aggressive music or even grind (Carcass does the trick there).

Wretches, whose portion consists of over 80% of the total playing time, is essentially the only valid reason to own this split apart from novelty issues. Their contribution is thrash metal divided into three tracks of surprisingly good quality. Again this isn’t outstanding in terms of originality but that doesn’t stop this from being enjoyable thrash metal. The musicians here are competent and everything is as it should be: competent thrashy drumming, good (if not that memorable) riffs and a cool kind of harsh vocals make this the worthy part of the split. Additionally, the production job is nice, with a crunchy yet not too loud sound being prevalent. These guys don’t seem to take themselves seriously either and there’s nothing wrong with that in this context, as the music is actually enjoyable and fun enough.

In the end, Fuck You/Presentation is a novelty release whose qualities are greatly overshadowed by the hype surrounding it. As the joke wears off and the listener is left with nothing but the music, reality catches up and begs the realization: this is nowhere near essential. It’s painfully generic. Wretches’ part is good enough and that makes this split worth owning if the opportunity presents itself, I guess, but definitely not good enough to make it worth hunting down. This will by no means ever become anything resembling a classic.

I'm glad to own an original copy of this, I can see this being a cult recording very soon, which I'm sure will include countless rereleases.

It's interesting how people became aware about this split. Fastowl was advertised on the metal-archives promotional board subforum, by a user calling himself FASTOWL_IS_FAST. He spoke of fastness and potatos in imperfect English and most people expected Fastowl to suck before they even gave it a listen. That was, until they actually heard the music! Fastowl then became the Susan Boyle of metal, as the three tracks the band had hosted online were really fucking good, and they make up Fastowl's side of this split. The songs are short, totalling less than two minutes between them, but they're some of the best grind tracks to have been released in years - fast, frantic, serious, varied and very genuine. No drum machine here (not that there's anything wrong with them), just fast, natural blasting, heavy thrashy riffing, blazing leads and hard hitting harsh vocals. The tempo changes a lot surprisingly for such short songs, keeping things very varied and interesting, and the band manage to play their material with tight precision whilst still sounding like a genuine live band.

It's a shame that Fastowl's side of the split is so short, because it's really good, and I'm very excited about hearing more material from them, perhaps a thirty song release, now that would be great. But as it stands right now we have to judge the band from just short of two minutes of material, which happens to be really, really great material.

Despite popular presumption, this isn't a one-sided split, and the Wretches side of the split is ALMOST as good, plus they have a lot more material with three songs totalling roughly four minutes each. You'd think that this side might get boring after Fastowl's frenzied assault on the ears but you're wrong, Wretches offer up twelve minutes of really excellent thrash metal, varying in speed although with plenty of fast moments, and significant influence from death metal (vocals, and some of the drum patterns) and heavy metal (some of the riffs and leads). The material is aggressive, hateful and very serious sounding. It's fantastic, because there's none of the silly party vibe that a lot of new thrash bands have. This isn't a band that last year were listening to Lamb of God and Trivium and then discovered Kill 'Em All and decided to start wearing leather jackets and writings songs about drinking and beating poseurs. No, this is serious thrash without any of the commercial flair of most modern day "old school" bands, very brutal yet full of melody with a clear love for the music itself and not just the aesthetic. Wretches have helped restore my faith in thrash metal, maybe it has a future afterall.

This is a really excellent split that pretty much came out of nowhere. It shows that you can make old-school style metal and still be really heavy and hard-hitting. Fastowl and Wretches aren't making a mockery of metal, they're keeping the spirit alive by playing menacing, punishing material that fails to compromise to anybody's standards. That's what makes this split so great, that and the fact that both bands are fantastic songwriters. Get an original copy of this split while you can and keep a close eye out for both bands, I have great expectations for both parties.