The Freeks, Full On: Between Before and After
Posted in Reviews on October 8th, 2013 by JJ Koczan
If nothing else, Full On is well named. The second full-length offering from Southern California five-piece The Freeks, it’s an album that has a few different working modes and moves with ease between them, but whatever the band — led by guitarist/vocalist Ruben Romano (ex-Nebula/Fu Manchu drums) — does during any given stretch of the album, rest assured, they’re going all out. That’s as true of the acoustic summertime The Freeks harness in “Splitting Atoms” as it is of the get-off-your-ass-and-rage Mondo Generator-style adults-only punk of “Bitchin'” and several of the other tracks. Romano shares vocal duties with guitarist Jonathan Hall (Backbiter) and bassist Tom Davies (also a Nebula alum), and the band is completed by Esteban Chavez on keys and drummer Hari Hassin (formerly of Roadsaw). They’re an act with a decent amount of experience who sound like they know what they’re doing when it comes to writing heavy rock and roll. Full On is for sure a West Coast album — one can hear desert-hue shades of grown-up Nebula-isms on songs like “The Secret Pathway” and “Fast and Black” — and even the rawest moments seem to be coming from that particularly Californian tradition of hardcore punk. But again, it’s a mature presentation. Not old, not tired, but conscious of the moves its making. One can get that sense even in the structure of the 10-track/34-minute Full On itself, and how songs are arranged not in clumps of rowdier and dreamier material, but in a way that keeps the listener moving from one atmosphere to another, all the while sandwiched between an intro and outro, titled “Before” and”After,” respectively, that underscore the purposefulness of what comes between them.
Tying the album together is a consistency of strong hooks and a tendency to, when they do delve into psychedelic territory, to do so in a manner that nods not at endless wandering jams, but at the roots of late-’60s pop. That’s maybe best exemplified by “Splitting Atoms,” but it shows up in side B’s “Vitamin D” as well, which is both the most singularly blissful inclusion on Full On and also the longest at 7:50. Contrasted by the rushing catchiness of “On a Whim” and “Weirdness” and “Bitchin’,” these peaceful moments can feel somewhat short-lived amid classic heavy rock raucousness, but it’s worth noting that the shifts seem effortless on the part of The Freeks and that the album, wherever it goes, does well in bringing its audience with it. The ambient intro and outro cuts, both just a little over a minute long, make for a decent bookend and provide transition into and out of the stylized chicanery that follows or precedes, but it’s in the opener-proper “Big Black Chunk” and the subsequent “Weirdness” that Romano and company really set the tone for what The Freeks have to offer sonically, the former delighting in an uptempo Alice Cooper cabaret during its verses only to give way to an immediate groover of a riff to serve as a chorus. Chavez‘ keys and a slew of spaced-out effects meet with garage boogie, and it seems for a while that “Big Black Chunk” is going to have it all until the next two pieces unfold and each give an entirely different feel for what becomes the scope of Full On. The two sides of the album — they’ve done vinyl and CD — don’t mirror each other exactly, but there are similar elements being used for both, whether it’s the sleeze-you-out groove of “Fast and Black” or the freakout that seems built up one layer at a time on “Vitamin D.”
