Fucked Up played Brighton Music Hall – 11/6

Back on Election Day – which already feels like a year ago – Canada’s proggiest hardcore band Fucked Up headlined a wild show at Brighton joined by Candy and Bad Waitress. 

It’d been a minute since we’d heard from Fucked Up – in album-length format, at least – but the Toronto six-piece reemerged from a sort-of hiatus in October as new Merge Records signees with an 82-minute monster to unleash upon the world. Dose Your Dreams – the band’s psychedelic, Joyce-referencing, quasi-concept-record-sequel – is their most ambitious effort to date. And for a group that’s no stranger to sprawling double LPs and 20-minute songs about the Chinese zodiac, that’s saying something.

For their first Boston appearance in over four years, Fucked Up brought the rains and some misguided hope in a Beto O’Rouke victory to Allston, but otherwise delivered a barnstorming set that lived up to their formidable live reputation. With their three-guitar engine roaring and the incomparable Damian Abraham doing his thing as frontman, the band effortlessly thrashed its way back into our hearts.

Fellow Canadians Bad Waitress opened the evening with an instantly-lovable blast of riff-y, shoutalong punk rock. Richmond’s Candy took a significantly heavier approach, while remaining one of the more colorfully-lit hardcore bands I’ve shot in recent memory.

A few of these images ran over at Vanyaland last month, but check out a lengthy full gallery from the whole night below.