The Second Coming of Fezz

Gutter Island, 2018 Photo by John Hoel and Per Lange

One of our very favorite bands we’ve gotten to know here at Garagerocktopia has been the fuzz-guitar driven cyclone of a band, Fezz. Their first ep, And Now...Fezz, came out in 2016, sounding like the smuggled recordings of a secret summit between the Chocolate Watchband and the Stooges. It was one of our favorite releases for the year, four songs, that, no matter what mood you are in, seem to put you in one even better.

We’re a little late getting word out about this, but the Katrineholm, Sweden-based group has released its second ep, … Number Two. This time around, it sounds like a few members of the Chocolate Watchband called it a day and a few more Stooges showed up. The sound of … Number Two has a decidedly sharper proto-punk edge. And we’re not the only ones to notice.

“We've got similar comments from others about the punk feeling of the new EP,” reported drummer Lars (the band members generally go by first names only), talking to Garagrocktopia by email. “We’ve been compared to the Dead Kennedys mixed with Ramones and Cramps - quite a good mentioning.”

The EP starts with “Good and Well,” a fuzz-and-feedback crunching frenzy with faint notes of rockabilly and a vague MC5 aftertaste. “Ladyland Batswingers” is probably the most straight-up garage punk cut on the EP, sounding like the Strangeloves with twice the testosterone and three times the voltage. “Rhesus Christ” and “You Do Not Belong” just raw-dog their way through approximately three minutes each of Stooge-like fury.

Thus far the band has only two EPs, but together, that’s almost an album’s worth of songs. Lars said there was no deliberate attempt to try and make the new EP punkier. Whatever the band tries to play, it just comes out Fezz.

“We don't think too much about the sound of the songs,” Lars explained. “It actually comes naturally because of all the fuzz boxes and the sheer volume of the amps.”

According Lars, last year was quite a good one for Fezz, but they’re looking to bust things wide open for themselves in 2019.

“2018 was a great year, with the new record as one of the highlights,” confirmed Lars.”Another highlight was playing the Gutter Island Garage Rock Festival in Denmark in August - we opened the Saturday and were mentioned as one of the favorite acts from quite a few of the audience. Even the shuttle driver we met the same night told us ‘thanks for the wake up.’"

“2019 will see some good gigs, as it seems,  and we’ll be recording of seven 'new' songs, including live favorites like "You're Dead", "Finding Bigfoot" and "Human Testbed".

Whether this will be a LP or a couple of singles is yet to be decided - doesn't matter as long as we get 'em out to our fans.”

More good news for the band and its fans is that the music is getting out across the planet, where extra-cool radio stations have given Fezz some spin.

We have some other features already in the works here at Garagerocktopia. Artists have been sending us some very cool stuff. As always, we don’t make any guarantees in stone but we’re happy to say we’ve gotten a lot of very promising music sent to us, and we’re always happy to spread the word about about bands that are playing the way-out kinds of music we profile here. Send us a line and we’ll talk.

Also, we do have a Facebook page for this blog. We don’t put personal stuff on it – no pictures of grandkids or our dinners or politics or anything like that. What we do post are announcements about upcoming features, maybe extra stuff about the bands, and any cool music, movies or TV Shows we stumble across that might have even the most tangential connection with the music featured here. While we don't spend all day thinking about it, we do like "likes" if you're so inclined ...