Released less than one full years ago, on Aug. 1, 2025, The Return Of… Live is the latest release in the to-date Fu Manchu catalog. It was put together as a limited-to-1,500 pressing of single LPs (they also made CDs) with nine tracks included. And at first, if that notion raised an eyebrow for some listeners — a single-LP Fu Manchu live album — I get it. In 2019, Fu Manchu‘s in-house label, At the Dojo Records, partnered with Roadburn Records to dig out the archival Live at Roadburn 2003, and that also had nine songs. But it was a festival set.

This isn’t. The Return Of… Live — both a nod to 2024’s The Return of Tomorrow (discussed here, review here) and to the first real resumption of a touring cycle the band had after the covid-19 pandemic — isn’t a single set. The release announcement quoted founding guitarist/vocalist Scott Hill as saying, “These nine songs were recorded during our 2024 The Return of Tomorrow UK/European tour. We had a great time at all of the shows and the crowds were amazing. We have been lucky enough to tour for the past 35 years and the songs on this album are some of our favorite old ones and new ones.”

If you want context, as Fu Manchu were playing that Roadburn set 23 years ago when drummer Scott Reeder was still brand new in the band alongside Hill, bassist Brad Davis and lead guitarist Bob Balch — the current, steady lineup finally established — they also put out what was their first official live record, Go for It… Live! (discussed here), which was similarly culled from recordings on tour. It was 22 tracks. It couldn’t even fit on a single CD, let alone a 12″.

So what gives? To me it strikes as a simple cost/benefit analysis. In 2003, Fu Manchu weren’t yet running their own label, and the entire ecosystem of releasing physical media was different. The Return Of… Live wasn’t made so a casual listener could walk into a Best Buy and pick it up off a rack. It was made so that fans who just had their asses handed to them at a show could head over to the merch table and support the band directly while getting something new in trade.

And the key part of that is the “something new.” It’s what Hill said as well: “some of our favorite old ones and new ones.” Showcasing new material was the priority. The tracklisting bears that out, not just in the songs from The Return of Tomorrow that feature — the maddeningly catchy “Loch Ness Wrecking Machine” and “Hands of the Zodiac,” as well as “The Return of Tomorrow” itself — but also the title-cut from 2018’s Clone of the Universe (discussed here, review here), which kind of undersells the value of that album but you can’t have everything, and “Dimension Shifter” from 2014’s Gigantoid (discussed here, review here), which began their At the Dojo Records era.

These newer songs land heavy alongside classics “Eatin’ Dust” — which makes a rousing and unexpected opener — “California Crossing,” “Hell on Wheels” and “Saturn III,” the latter of which closes.  Jim Monroe, who’s been at the helm periodically throughout the last 11 years, mixes, and while Hill‘s voice has clearly changed in the 20-plus years since Go For It… Live!, sounding lower and more guttural but still clear, the grooves and shove of the older material remains, and the newer songs are vibrant in collusion with them. Fu Manchu have rarely been a band to radically depart their songwriting modus, but the last 12 years or so have seen them push the boundaries of what they can do with their music, whether that’s breaking their LP-every-few-years convention for the series of three Fu30 EP (discussed here) releases marking their 30th anniversary or formatting The Return of Tomorrow as their first studio 2LP with a specific intent to letting (digital) listeners jumble their own tracklisting.

Those aren’t things that the band would’ve or could’ve done in the ’90s when they were still hashing out both their lineup and aesthetic, but The Return Of… Live comes across in no small part as a victory lap for their meta-creativity, as well as a chance for longtime or newcomer fans to have live versions of these songs in their collection and help sustain the band on the road financially, which I don’t note as a negative or a criticism in the slightest. Band’s gotta live, and it could hardly be more fitting for Fu Manchu to do that on their own terms.

That drive toward individualism is part of Fu Manchu‘s character these 35-plus years on from their founding, as essential as the fuzz-heavy rock they helped pioneer, recognized in flashes of commercial potential like their appearance on the 2000 soundtrack of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 or any number of other movies and games, if not in the basic longevity and continued relevance of a band who’ve been developing and applying their craft for so long and seen so much else — culturally speaking — come and go in that time. Fu Manchu predate the internet in your house, not just on your phone. They may yet outlive it entirely.

Because of course they’re still a working band. They have anniversary reissues slated this year for ’90s landmarks, and they’ll be at festivals in Europe for most of the summer. At some point maybe in another year or two, they’ll get to work on another album, and in the meantime, there are copious side-projects around whatever Fu Manchu are doing in a given stretch, whether it’s Balch (Big Scenic Nowhere, Slower, Yawning Balch, Axe Dragger, etc.), Davis (Gods of Sometimes, Davis) or Reeder (Jacket Thief). Beyond that coming tour, I don’t know what the future has in store, but I feel like Fu Manchu didn’t become one of the most reliable guitar-driven outfits in the history of recorded music by taking either themselves, their processes or their fans for granted, and that if you’re making a bet, betting on them is one of the safest you could ever hope to make.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading this low-key catalog series of Friday Full-Lengths. It probably won’t be the last, but it’s the longest I’ve done thus far and it’s been a pleasure to dig into these records; each week looking forward to a bit of Fu on Friday. If you kept up, I appreciate it.

—

Damn, it’s noon. I did two interviews this week. One with Esben Willems from Monolord and one with Doug Sherman from Gozu. These are two gentlemen whose company I very much enjoy, so as I haven’t really habitually done interviews in like three years, I wanted to start out as much in my comfort zone as I could. I think I’m not going to post the videos. That’s right, y’all. Text interviews. Remember those?

This weekend is Cosmic Sonic Rendezvous — Saturday and Sunday, because it’s a holiday and nobody’s going to work Monday anyhow — and I’ll be at that if you’re going. I’ve seen the schedule and it’s a marathon and I won’t be able to see everything. I suspect some of the hard choices I’ll need to make will come down to which venue I want to be in at what time. I’ll figure it out and do the writing accordingly.

We had a meeting with The Pecan’s teacher and case manager yesterday. She’s doing alright in the fourth grade math class, still kind of losing it every now and then but basically alright in the room, which is huge. She had a test yesterday. Her last one she got a B, which was like culture-shock for the kid who didn’t get a problem wrong between kindergarten and this year in second grade. Multi-step directions kill her. That’s an ADHD thing too. We also heard a bit more about her reading/writing, which she tested at grade level for before the school year started but her teacher puts her at the end of third grade in terms of the skills she’s willing to demonstrate now (always a question what you’ll actually get out of her in a given scenario; she’s not there to perform for your ass, whether you’re grading her or not), and that felt really good to hear. We’re still pursuing the other school, but in the meantime, I’m glad her days aren’t as miserable as they seem to have been a year ago this time.

Zelda update. I finished the Ship of Harkinian PC port of Ocarina of Time, and it was incredible. The best time I’ve had playing the game since I was in high school, and if and when I’m looking to play it again, that’s what I’ll reach for. It was so fun I got all 100 of the gold skulltula tokens. I’ve started a run through Twilight Princess, which is something of a spiritual successor/sequel anyhow and also just released a PC port called Dusklight. It’s definitely ‘earlier-version,’ if you know what I mean — like, might break at a moment’s notice — but it looks gorgeous and plays well anyhow and I’m through the Forest Temple so will probably keep that going unless I run into some serious technical snag. I still haven’t done the withered tree quest in Wind Waker. Saving it for a special occasion.

That’s the update.

If you’re in NYC at Cosmic Sonic Rendezvous this weekend, awesome, I’ll hope to say hi. Hope you have a great and safe one, whatever else might be on tap. Don’t forget to hydrate and don’t forget to say fuck fascism every chance you get lest these fascists think their behavior remotely acceptable on any human level. Always remember you are better.

FRM.

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Tags: At the Dojo Records, California, Fu Manchu, Fu Manchu The Return Of... Live, San Clemente, The Return Of... Live

This entry was posted on Friday, May 22nd, 2026 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.