Firefriend | Decreation Facts (2023, sky blue vinyl).

Another mind-bending set of psychedelic and noise rock bangers from the now quasi-legendary band from São Paolo, Brazil. I already own a few of their records and it is always this super cool example of tone sculpting and warping and experiments in the form and structure of rock music. The closest parallels to me among other bands are Sonic Youth, Bardo Pond and Indian Jewelry. All of which I’ve actually seen live so maybe someday these people especially since they’ve been touring elsewhere. The USA just makes it super expensive to tour here for people in bands so if you don it have some kind of moneyed backing it is challenging. This is explicitly anti-fascist, anti-authoritarian rock music the way maybe MC5 would have been in another era or even the way Os Mutantes was from the same city and country in offering a strong, creative, cultural alternative to mainstream culture and built into the music is a transport outside of standard consciousness as well and in that way definitely modern revolution rock. Easily year end best list. 

In the crowded psych field there are a handful of bands who are widely recognised as being at the top of their game and embraced as such. Firefriend come into that category; they may have been making music for nearly two decades but they have used that time well, growing in outlook and stature and releasing a series of albums of astonishing quality, each one of which takes a step in a different direction. It is a restless world and the enemy adapts so it is good never to become predictable and never to stay in one place for any length of time. So with Firefriend you cannot guess what is coming next and that only adds to the excitement when the trio announce that new music is on the horizon.

Decreation Facts certainly treads new ground. Whereas 2021 is brilliant Dead Icons dripped slowly through your consciousness and captured your soul through stealth, this collection simply scares you to death and leaves you shaking on the floor. If you think you have heard unsettling music before, you were only at the prologue as Firefriend here write the definitive book on how to unnerve and disturb. As guitarist/vocalist Yury Hermuche told us, "We wrote and recorded this album between the pandemic and WW3 – times of groundbreaking changes – and somehow that uneasy feeling got into our songs. Reality is the most crazy trip, isn it it? And we ire always trying to explore new territories: we want a new album to take you to new places, so we were chasing the sounds, structures and moods to make this a truly new album to match this wild new world." It is a struggle to hint at just how this record sounds. Take The Doors at their most spaced out, cross them with Siouxsie and the Banshees at their scariest (1980-81), inject them with liquid paranoia and you are halfway there. A lot of the credit for this must lie with bassist and vocalist Julia Grassetti who plays the creepiest basslines, not content with notes that build the melody and carry the song along, but instead forming patterns of sound that make you believe there is something fatal lurking just around the corner.

This is dark from the off. An ominous keyboard drone opens "Rainbow", one of the more straightforward songs here, but even this collapses into distortion halfway through whilst Julia is expressive vocals help to hone an edge that only becomes more cutting the deeper you delve into the album. Road traffic fights its way through the title track while the bass does its damage and Yury and Julia open proceedings with "I lost my soul last night ..." The guitars play whatever the hell they like, breaking the skin of the song which then just stops dead after two and half minutes. Bloody hell. C. Amaral is metronomic drumming drops us into the hell of "Acid Rain High-Speed Clouds" which struggles to be a song at all rather than a fatal injury, while "Hunt" begins with a gorgeous slew of distorted guitars and appears to be four unconnected layers of sound that have been glued together to make one disturbed vision. "The Lost Decade" is probably the most classically formed song here with Yury dropping telling vocals over a quite glorious guitar line that bends and wavers through the whole song before "Outer Limits" closes the first half, all whispered threats and edgy bass.

The guitars in "Infrared" throw in tense horror movie riffs as Yury and Julia harmonise over towering drums and angry keyboards, the song burning but never finding respite, while "Shooting Stars" is broken and distorted and dies young. "Moldy Cream" is another gem, with its dislocated limbs neatly sewn together, with "Beatrice is Cake" offering dark psych as drugged guitars wash over Julia is wistful vocals. "You will always have one more chance," she repeats, unconvinced. "Last Letter From The Reckless Son" is a tense uphill climb, with Yury half-whispering his vocals amid drum metal and disturbing echoes, with Julia closing the album with "We re Going In The Wrong Direction", a plaintive slow number built on a piano with a wistful Moog seranade. It is a fine way to close a dark record, resonating with empathy and poignancy.

This is a well-named record. "Decreation" is the undoing of creation, something destructive and primal and that is a theme captured so well in these twelve songs. Yury explained to us that the album "is a commentary on our 21st century, so violent and radical. We live in times of accelerated transformation. It seems like one of those decisive historical moments that changed the world. This lust for wars and destruction and death and coups is airborne, repeated exhaustively in the press, on TV. At the same time that the internet is changing our understanding of the world, we are also dealing with AI and robots, DNA editing, the disintegration of work and money, and unprecedented environmental destruction. It is probably the most volatile time in our entire history because people have really forgotten what a nuclear bomb is – or what 10,000 nukes can do. And all of this has direct implications for our lives, because reality is overwhelming. But on the other hand, this moment is also one of great hope – we can do so much better with all the tools available, our diverse cultures, technology, humanism. It is all hanging by a thread - that is the absurd poetry that shapes this album."

Decreation Facts truly is a stunning achievement. It is a record that ably captures the zeitgeist of the times and one that will have your brain in a whirl. Seldom have we come across a collection where we have had to turn the record off at various stages just to think about what it is doing and what it is saying. And to shake our heads clear. It is remarkable. The digital version of the album is being released on 21st March on Bandcamp, though the vinyl will not arrive until late May. Of course, there will not be enough of this album pressed, with only 500 copies shared between Little Cloud (US) and Cardinal Fuzz (UK), so fight like a bastard to get one. In the meantime delve into the digital world and by the time the vinyl arrives you may just have got your head around what has happened here.

Took some time off with a fever. As always I tried to sleep it off, but ended up dreaming really weird and disturbing dreams. Things got really batshit when I got up and put on Firefriend‘s new album Decreation Facts and immediately got thrown back into my fever dream state.

Firefriend from Sao Paolo, Brazil are nothing but one of a kind. On Decreation Facts their brand of psychedelic rock is as claustrophobic and urgent as their message: “we are going in the wrong direction…”. This feeling of having made a turn for the worse, without a way out or anywhere to go rubs off on the music, which is anxious, subdued, and brooding. Just like my current mental and physical state, it is cloudy, hazy, and pretty unstable. It might just “go off” at any time, Sonic Youth-style, like the frenzied near-black metal of Acid Rain High Speed Clouds.

Still the fever rages on, combined with the headaches it makes me reach for some sedatives. I have never been on horse tranquillizers, or anything heavily sedating the senses, but I feel Firefriend have. Their music feels somehow slowed down in time, like someone switched the wrong lever on your record player. And yet it feels it is completely balanced out that way. The dreamy, frightened rabbit in the headlight versus stoned Lou Reed vocal performance adds to this discomfiting atmosphere as well.

As I fall back in a fevered slumber I hear voices echo “you’ve got to find your way back…”. I will in time, my lovely fire friends, and when I do I will listen to your album again and again, if only to reach this cool and sedate state of mind again without physical hindrance.

I talked to Firefriend‘s Yuri Hermuche, who sings and plays guitars. His wife Julia Grassetti handles the bass, and C.Amaral completes the trio on drums. Together they are Firefriend, summoner of fever dreams, this is their story…

How are you? How has the pandemic period been for Firefriend?
We’re happy and sad at the same time. The pandemic and now WW3 brought some crucial questions to the center of our existence; what should we do with our lives in these times when everything is falling apart and the very survival of everyone we know is in the hands of a few crazy lunatics? How should one live under the threat of nuclear war? How are we going to live our last years, months, weeks, days or hours? These questions have been shaping our daily choices. The fact that we kept playing and recording new songs and albums tells you that we’re seeking total fruition of our last minutes of life.

Can you introduce the band, and how did you meet, etc?
We’ve been part of the underground scene in Sao Paulo for quite a long time — first attending parties and shows of known local bands, where Julia and I found each other. We started the band in 2006, got married in 2007, played with several friends until 2013, then we found C.Amaral at a gig. Since then we’ve released some 10 albums and played around Brazil, in the US and also in Europe.

What can you tell me about your musical backgrounds?
Julia grew up listening to Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin; C.Amaral loves John Coltrane and Beak; I love Velvet Underground, Darker My Love and Spiritualized. And somehow we put all these references together in our sound.

What does a regular day in your lives look like?
The best of it are the moments when we take a walk around the neighborhood or we’re rehearsing/recording at our garage.

What is the best thing about Decreation Facts?
It was made out of our love for music, critical thinking and the lust for adventure. It is fuel to all of you traveling across this tiny planet.

What can you tell me about the message of the album?
The message of the album is: we’re going in the wrong direction. We’ve been tricked down this path by lies, corruption and power. What are you going to do?

Where do you live and what is the environment like for musicians like you?
Sao Paulo is the largest city of the southern hemisphere; it’s chaotic, dirty, very violent, under huge stress due to economic collapse. Still it’s a magnet for musicians from all over the country. Despite the bleak situation, we’re all playing and recording all the time.

Who are some contemporary musical heroes of yours?
We love to see our favorite artists evolving and keeping their thing going; Sonic Boom, BJM, The Warlocks, Tim Presley, every friend releasing a new album and touring, they are our heroes.

Can you tell me about how you go about composing and recording songs?
We practice a lot at our garage — each one of us brings riffs, beats or small pieces of songs and then we see how far we can go with those ideas. We’re seeking our own sound, searching for new territories, new worlds to explore. We do everything at our own garage and the whole process is an endless fountain of joy. It’s like a spaceship, we can go far away from this troubled planet for a few hours.

What are your immediate and long term future plans?
All I’ve got is now. My plan is to enjoy every minute of my life. I want to see my friends and laugh with them. If planet Earth is still here in June, we’re going on a tour abroad. Also two LPs are going to be released this year. But the future is uncertain. Whoever tells you about the future is doing so with faith, which I don’t have anymore. So we’re starting to record a new album right now.

Düstere Sounds für düstere Zeiten.

Die Dunkelheit war bei Firefriend auch schon irgendwie auf dem 2021er "Dead Icons" Thema. Damals setzte man musikalisch mehr auf Shoegaze. Für das neue Album "Decreation Facts" (Little Cloud / Cardinal Fuzz) lässt die Band aus Brasilien wieder davon ab.

Es gibt mehr Neo Psych, der dieses Mal eine düstere Note erfährt. Dazu Dream Pop, viel Stimmungsvolles und leichte Schwenks zu Trip Hop. Mit „Hunt“ und „Infrared“ hat man zwei Nummern, die irgendwo zwischen Primal Scream und Massive Attack zum Liegen kommen.

Das Verlorene passt ja irgendwie auch zur Realität, wird hier dann recht gut verarbeitet. Auf "Acid Rain High-Speed Clouds" stören ungestüme Drums den hypnotischen Beat. "The Lost Decade" irrt umher, hat aber dennoch einen coolen Groove.

Gegen Ende der Platte dann lockere Songs. Vielleicht gibt es doch noch ein wenig Hoffnung.

Fazit: Schöner Versuch.
7.9/10