FUCC The INS (20th Anniversary Remaster)

Album review

"Amerikan people, they have come to take your jobs away!" announces the cover of FUCC the I.N.S., and this Bosnian-Bulgarian-American-Japanese outfit could put a lot of U.S. bands out of business. Their potent mix of punk, metal, and Balkan brass band music (with in-your-face production by Billy Gould of Faith No More) is sarcastic -- there are takeoffs of Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy" and Backstreet Boys as part of the mix -- but it hews closely to traditional Balkan music, played with a fiery intensity. The opening "Nadija" explodes out of the box, with vocalist Gino Srdjan Yevdjevich wailing like a banshee over the guitars and tortuous, stop-time horns (whose sounds are eerily reminiscent of King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man"). But they're equally capable of unaccompanied singing of sheer glory and using thoroughly contemporary house drum loops as part of their musical arsenal. "Montenegro H.C." is as boastful as a rapper talking about his money or genitalia, while "How to Fucc Songs & Irritate People" could almost have come from the Zappa songbook at times, at least if Zappa had been raised in Sarajevo. Whether it's rock, metal, or world music is almost irrelevant; as the album's title implies, boundaries are man-made, not natural, and should be treated with cultural disdain. Quite deliberately incendiary, this isn't an album that asks to be heard; it demands it.
© Chris Nickson /TiVo