Fossilised is a loud, aggressive screamfest of a song. I sat at home with my flatmate, pressed play on the speakers and together we were thrown immediately into a virtual mosh pit. After a few seconds of adjusting to the chaos, I found I was happy to be there.
The West Yorkshire trio are back, this time with a garage/post-punk mashup. It’s angry, angsty, and melodic, all rolled up together. I’ll get the negatives out the way first, because overall I liked the song. You could argue the
single fails to bring anything really new to the table. It sounds as though Kurt Cobain has had an angry lovechild with Damon Albarn, and that lovechild really liked The Idles.
Grunge is 30 years old, Eddie Veder is 57, System of a Down long ago perfected the melody-while-screaming, and we have My Chemical Romance to fall back on if we are feeling nostalgic. Notwithstanding, Fossilised’s ability to mix between several genres and time periods overall works in its favour. It sounds like a successful fusion, a cocktail of rage and passion. A sound can be new and groundbreaking, but it’s not of interest if it’s unlistenable (see Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music as a case in point). Fossilised is very listenable. Despite the aggression the song never loses you, lead vocalist Charlie Fossick builds the tension well, letting off long enough for you to get your breath back. It’s loud enough to lose yourself in, but not so manic that it’s hard to listen to – a stark improvement to their previous songs.
Like so many bands that thrive on stage, Dense sometimes fails to entice listeners at home. Fever Dream, for instance, although great live, can come across as quite migraine-inducing when listening on your headphones. Fossilised is just as listenable moshing out as it is walking to work.
Produced by Ross Orton of AM fame, the single was released last Friday. Aside from the producer, Fossilised has little in common with the ballad sound of the Arctic Monkeys’ new album. The song deals with being buried by the setbacks of modern life in Britain. ‘I can’t find a way out… I’m spending days crushed away’. Fossick screams ‘I’m cold inside’ while a crescendo of Sam Heffer’s drums explode, and you can feel the anger, the resentment and pain. You can feel the rage at everything from the Conservative Party’s latest embarrassment, to climate change not being tackled seriously, to Leeds struggling to stay out of the relegation zone. All the anger of the post-Brexit, post-Covid years come out in this song, and it is surprisingly very relatable. In a time of political and economic turbulence, Fossilised is as good a way as any to let out your frustration.
