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Adam Dew Hammond, Isolation Records
2023-03-21
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.
Jasper Hesselink, Weirdo Shrine
2023-03-21
I have never been on horse tranquillizers, or anything heavily sedating the senses, but I feel Firefriend have. MORE...


Reverb is for lovers, Germany
2023-03-30
Düstere Sounds für düstere Zeiten. MORE...


Maxwell Seeman, THE SLEEPING SHAMAN
2021-06-01
Dead Icons is an achievement of great proportions. We’re talking unstoppable originality. If you’re searching for new music that will make a serious impression on you, has an ultra hip vibe with musical hooks impossible to ignore and impactful lyrical content, then Firefriend‘s Dead Icons is not one to pass on. Give it a listen, it’s sure to impress. MORE...


Adam Dew Hammond, Isolation Records
2021-07-02
There is certainly a lot of love for them in the UK and this release is going to do nothing but bolster that enthusiasm as these ten songs over forty-five minutes are some of their darkest, strongest and most memorable to date. MORE...


Gannon, SIC Magazine
2021-06-24
The band have long had a combustible way of making their point heard, and Dead Icons pours petrol on the embers of their back-catalogue while conflating many of the best guitar records in history with reverential glee. Sit back and watch them burn. MORE...


Jeff Penczak, It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine
2021-06-20
Dead Icons continues their psychedelic assault on the senses like a midnight raid on a pantry full of fuzz boxes, swarming electronics and room-swirling vibrations. MORE...


J.Wasko, The Ominous Drone
2021-06-18
Another classic Firefriend LP. They don’t mess around with mediocre. You can be sure this one will be near the top of many end of year lists. MORE...


The Psych Rock, San Francisco
2020-12-02
The sound quality on this album is very good the mix has warm tones and clear isolation of the various instruments. Each musicians performance it strong and the overall effect is highly inspired. MORE...


Ian Smith, UK
2020-12-01
It’s rare for a band to make something so fresh this far in. MORE...


Emiliano D'Aniello, Italy
2019-06-01
Il gruppo è in giro da pi? di un decennio e la accoppiata “Yellow Spider”-“Sulfur” (il secondo LP ha una copertina semplicemente spettacolare e che ci invita letteralmente a entrare dentro questa feconda fornace cosmica che è il sound di questo gruppo e che poi forse è veramente il sound del futuro del rock psichedelico) nel 2018 è stata semplicemente strepitosa. Superarsi era difficile, quasi impossibile, eppure i Firefriend ci sono riusciti. MORE...


SIC magazine, Brussels/UK/USA
2019-08-01
More than deserving of its place deep in rock’n’roll’s hall of fame is the mid-distant, part-spoken vocal that comes reverbed out to the point of disinterest. It’s just effortlessly cool and it’s not the only trick São Paulo band Firefriend lift from the iconic handbook as the trio continue their prolific career with new LP Avalanche. MORE...


Primal Music Blog, Ireland
2018-10-01
The ever prolific São Paulo-based trio of ‘Firefriend’ continue to plough a deep sonic furrow in todays modern psych firmament. MORE...


SIC magazine, Brussels/UK/USA
2018-11-01
Lashings of tremulous reverb once more throw up mirages so real you just want to dive right into these oases, but these are both fertile and dark conjurings. MORE...


Dan Joy, WHEN THE SUN HITS
2018-06-01
a wonderful fusion of song and experimentation—dark and heavy, jaggedly beautiful, uplifting in its ultimate effect. MORE...


Kev Drummond, UK
2018-06-01
So instead of taking the easy option and asking Google, I took the time to ask the band themselves. Don’t ask me why, I’m no jounalist or writer, but I felt compelled to learn more about the Northern British sounding band from São Paulo, Brazil. MORE...


Reverb is for lovers, Germany
2018-04-01
Firefriend sind hier sehr spacig unterwegs, driften ab, schrecken aber auch nicht vor unangenehmen Geräuschansammlungen zurück. MORE...


Emiliano D'Aniello, Italy
2018-04-01
è sicuramente per quanto mi riguarda una delle novità nel genere neo-psichedelico più convincenti e anche tra quelle più accattivanti e che potrebbero richiamare una certa attenzione. MORE...


Le Crowley, UK
2018-04-01
Title track ‘Sulfur’ channels space rock vibes with its heady mixture of dystopian electronic noise, ethereal vocals and warped guitars It builds in oscillating layers that grab attention with ever rotation. MORE...


Jack Beltane, US
2017-05-01
The bass grooves move you along; the drums tell your heart to beat; the guitar-work needles its way into your subconscious and pulls forth demons; and the vocals ease you back to sleep. MORE...


Emiliano D'Aniello, Italy
2018-01-01
Il sound della band è una psichedelia drone infettata di quel sound noise derivato da esperienze come quella dei Sonic Youth o dei Blonde Redhead più sperimentali e riverberi ereditati dallal lunga tradizione dei 13th Floor Elevators. MORE...


Simon SixSmith, Netherlands
2013-12-01
This is a sweeping, expansive, peyote trip down death valley. MORE...


Al Schenkel, Brasil
2014-05-01
uma fusão estarrecedora e com poucos precedentes qualitativos em parâmetros nacionais e de genêro, encontrando nas raízes do shoegaze, free-jazz e psychedelic-rock a força motriz e direcionamento para a exploração hipnótica, brilhante e ousada presentes em Witch Tales MORE...


Linkiesta, Italia
2015-05-01
... è piuttosto un meraviglioso caleidoscopio di influenze. I Firefriend non si fanno problemi a mescolare rock, jazz, percussioni latinoamericane, chitarre slabbrate ed effetti psichedelici. MORE...







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Firefriend


2023   DECREATION FACTS
2022   HOME OR EXILE
2022   CRYPTOMNESIA
2021   DEAD ICONS
2019   AVALANCHE
2019   HOTEL BAR
2018   YELLOW SPIDER
2018   SULFUR
2017   THE BLACK HOLE
2016   NEGATIVE SUN
 
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