Fezz Brings Da Fuzz

 

We’ve been featuring a lot of power pop of late, and we’ll continue to do so. But this week we get right back to garage rock basics with a very cool band from Sweden, Fezz.

We’ll have to plagiarize our own Facebook page to describe Fezz’ sound, which comes down mostly to fuzz-drenched pre-psychedelic garage punk at its finest. The beats are heavy, the music is loud, and the band’s songs and image are chock-full of brash snarkiness. 

In other words, it’s precisely everything our teeny-tiny hearts here at Gargerocktopia would want in a garage rock band.

“Our biggest influence is hard to pinpoint,” recounted drummer Lars Halvarsson, who talked to Garagerocktopia by email. “I answered that question in one interview by saying you should think of it as if The Cramps and Motörhead had a baby, who would play Ramones.”

It’s often been postulated, correctly or not, that a number of mainstream rock bands have started as an idea cooked up by a bunch of suits at a corporate board meeting. 

Certainly, there are no shortage of bands – from Journey to Nickelback -- that sound like that might be the case. But every so often, like with the Monkees, the result can actually be a cool band. Fezz, though not a corporate creature, would be an example  of concept first, band later.

“We actually started with the name,” Halvarsson explained, “made a logo, printed a back drop...then we started rehearsing,”

This wasn’t just a bunch of guys who went to a casting call and got thrown together, though. Fezz is a sort of underground supergroup, whose members have decades of playing punk and garage rock under their belts.

The other members of Fezz are Stomp (ex of Shoutless, Skimmers) on fuzz guitar; Mooze, formerly of Sven Jennings and the Nashville Rebels, on fuzz octave guitar; Emmy Lee on fuzz-guitar; and Halvarsson, who goes by Lasse and was also a part of Sven Jennings and of the Diamond Dogs. Yes, we could have dug around or been insistent that we get real names, but our feeling here is that most of you will enjoy the music every bit as much if we do it this way. 

“Two of us started playing during the 70's punk era and the others during the garage revival era of the 80's,” Halvarsson pointed out, “so it's really a mix of 60's garage sound with the power of the original punk movement.”

“But all of us have been playing, mostly garage rock, since way back,” said Halvarsson. “We’ve all been in different bands and on different recordings: The Shoutless, Slammers, Nashville Rebels, Diamond Dogs, Red Mint to name a few. We've been playing as a band since 2013, with the current set up since 2014, when we added the fantastic Emmy-Lee on lead guitar.”

The band has just released an ep-cd, And Now … Fezz. It’s only four songs, and of course you’ll quickly want a lot more. For now, a little of this music does truly go a long way. “Fezzalized” is three minutes and change worth of concussive feedback fury. 

“It’s Awright” is by no means a let-up, though it harkens back a little more to both ‘60s and ‘80s garage. “Good Christian” veers slightly in a rockabilly direction and “Del Rio’s Close Shave” softens things up slightly, though it’s by no means elevator music.

“The first cd-ep is almost sold out and our new, four-song song vinyl seven-inch  is planned to be released this autumn, on Beluga Records,” reports Halvarsson. “We've been featured on some fine radio shows around the world, including The Music Authority and Ice Cream Man Power Pop And More to name just two of them, and we get quite good traffic on Spotify. The internet radio shows are fantastic, too!”

Live, the band likes to crank it up, too. Most of their gigs have been in Sweden, but they have ventured next door to Norway as well.

“Most of our gigs has been in clubs in mid-Sweden, the Stockholm area, but also on different festivals, like Crazy Rockabilly Cruise  -- we still don't know how we ended up there -- and Gutterball 2017 in Oslo.”

They may not have 11’s  on their amps, but surely even Spinal Tap would appreciate the amount of decibels and the raw-dog fury with which Fezz has taken their music to the streets.

“The biggest problem playing clubs is that the owners don't really like our set up,” admits Halvarsson. “Which has four or five 100 watt Fezzwatt stacks on full, an 1940's air raid siren and gong.  But once we start playing, they hang around with a big smile on their face. We're also proud of our signature amplifiers, guitars and fuzzboxes, all of which can be seen and heard on our Facebook page and our Youtube account. Just search for “Fezz Fury.”

”For me, as the drummer, it's always fine to have my band mates screaming ‘hit them harder!’

Here at Garagerocktopia, we're always looking for cool bands and awesome garage rock related stuff to report on. We have reason to believe that a fair number of regular readers here are musicians themselves. Please feel free to send us your music and information. We won't guarantee a write-up, but some we've had some very awesome artist step up. Email us (that's how we got hip to Fezz) or you can visit our Facebook page.

Rock on!