The Whatmans

Fire Up The Masses

9
9/10
Joel Frieders | May 3, 2011

EDIT: You people do realize I'm Irish no? Take a fucking joke.

Oh the Irish.

What a lousy bunch of shitbirds.

You feel for them for a number of reasons: prone to addiction, weirdly fascinated and mind-controlled by potatoes, often very very pale, normally completely impossible to understand when they speak because they are genetically born with larger tongues... shit I could go on here.

But the Whatmans man. They're my new favorite band from Ireland. Further proof that Irishies will do anything to get off that god forsaken rock so many of our ancestors called a homeland so many years ago. This album Fire Up The Masses is fucking GIGANTICALLY fucking AWESOME.

So many things get taken advantage of on this album:

The hi-hat takes a fucking beating like a wife who wouldn't listen throughout. The drummer makes this about the band rather than himself and it rewards the album with a consistent, huge cock keeping rhythm, while the attention-hungry Fucks in the band scream and revolt out front of the drum set.

The guitars attack like a cousin to Wolfmother, but with the class to sell out a bombed out pub in Belfast, not some shanty in shit-for-citizens-Australia.

The vocals are that of a glue-huffing addicted sanskrit major who puts more time into his hackey sacking than actual sanskrit. It's fucking rock and roll in all its glory. There isn't a hint of faux in any of this shit, it's just fucking music.

"Can I rip off your knees?" the drunk Irishman screams at me on the track "Follow Me". The answer is no, of course, but FINA-fucking-LY A fucking BAND WHERE THE LEAD SINGER WANTS ME TO FIGHT HIM WHILES HE SINGS AT ME'S! Fuck YES!

This is gritty "I'm Irish, but I know which one is the salad fork you fucking mook" rock. I hear Rush, I hear Wolfmother, I hear Deep Purple, I hear myself masturbating in a sauna.

I have a favorite band from Ireland. Would I let them sleep on my couch? Fuck no. Would I book them at South By SYFFAL? A resounding Fuck YES.