Fuel - Monuments To Excess

Fuel was derisively introduced to me as "Fuel-gazi". And, yeah, I obviously can hear the similarities; a propulsive two-guitar quartet with hollered vocals. I was told they were the Gilman Street counterpart to the Wilson Center's Fugazi. But these were Bay Area kids, doing their first band, not the former members of hardcore and emo royalty. And even if they were consciously aping another band's sound, fuck, they were good at it.

The key revelation here is a pre-transition Sarah Kirsch on guitar and vocals. Long before she pushed the boundaries of hardcore with personal favorites like Please Inform The Captain This Is A Hijack and Baader Brains, she made an immediate impact with these amazing sonic textures on guitar throughout Fuel's 17-song catalog. For me, that's the standout. Was anyone in their peer group playing with such speed and technique? I dunno: I was 13 and still two years from my first punk show when they broke up.

"Monuments To Excess" collects Fuel's self-titled LP, a 7" released on Lookout!, and a pair of splits with Ontario's Phleg Camp and Angry Son from Oklahoma. The artwork and design is some of my favorite John Yates work, and is adapted from his earlier cover for the LP. He also compiled the songs for his Allied Recordings; Ebullition handles the vinyl compilation. By the time this came out, Kirsch had moved onto Torches To Rome, while her former bandmates had disappeared from recorded bands. San Francisco's Broken Rekids would reissue this in 2000, but it's been out of print for a number of years. That sucks, because, along with Leatherface, Fuel would set the template up for .org-core to be a thing starting in the late 90s. And if folks are going to pick on Fuel for having a similar sound to Fugazi, then Hot Water Music and Braid and a bunch of other bands owe Fuel some royalties.

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