Fucked Up

Fucked Up is a hardcore punk band from Toronto, Canada. The band won the 2009 Polaris Music Prize for the album The Chemistry of Common Life. The band formed and played their first shows in early 2001. The initial practicing lineup consisted of 10,000 Marbles (Mike Haliechuk, Guitar), Concentration Camp (Josh Zucker, Vocals), Mustard Gas (Sandy Miranda, Bass Guitar) and Chris Colohan (of Left For Dead/The Swarm fame, and was lead vocalist for now-defunct Cursed).

Just prior to recording their demo tape, Concentration Camp moved to guitar and vocal duties were taken over by Pink Eyes (Damian Abraham, also known as Mr. Damian). Drums are played by Mr. Jo (Jonah Falco, also credited as G.

Beat or J. Falco). Following the release of the demo, the band embarked on a long series of 7" records. The band released the "No Pasaran" 7" in May 2002.

The Police 7" was released on March 2003, quickly followed the Baiting the Public 7" in May 2003. Two more 7"'s followed in 2004, the Dance of Death single, and the Litany 4-song ep. The vinyl releases to this point were collected on 2004s Epics in Minutes CD. The band was the subject of a two-minute 16 mm film showing its links to the Toronto hardcore scene, a local infoshop and punk radio show.

The band's use of imagery and symbolism (notable the use of Sigils) took a decided turn after the release of Epics in Minutes, as it was followed by two limited 12"s, the Looking for Gold 12", and the live Let Likes be Cured by Likes 12". The Looking for Gold 12" contained no liner notes or credits, no song titles, and a hidden track. It was self-released by the band in 2004 in two limited runs of 300 & 400 copies. The title track was 16 minutes long, used 18 guitar tracks, had a three minute drum solo and contained 5 minutes of whistling.

In the summer of 2004 the band released the Generation 7" and 12" eps. After touring for most of 2005 the band took on David Eliade as a quasi-full time manager/promoter. In early 2006 Eliade began shopping demos of songs from the planned Hidden World album to labels, ending with the band signing to Jade Tree Records for an early fall 2006 release of the album. Jade Tree is distributed by Touch & Go which in turn has a distribution agreement with ADA (Warner Music Group).

Jade Tree licensed the vinyl version to Deranged Records, which released it as a double album in November 2006. Several other records, such as Year of the Dog 12" were released, before the band went on the European tour, visiting England, Germany and Spain, among other places. January 16, 2007 marked the band's live television debut on MTV Live, where they were introduced as "Effed Up". During their performance of their song "Baiting The Public", the majority of the audience were moshing and causing damage to the set (also visible was a cut from lead singer Damien's forehead), resulting in a sum of $2000 in damages.

This performance sparked controversy and resulted in MTV Canada banning moshing from future MTV Live performances.