Fudge Tunnel - Hate Songs In E Minor

A celebration of The Riff, delivered via one of the heaviest productions ever recorded

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Heavy Metal has always been centred around the riff. However the delivery of the riff is just as important, in my view anyway. To clarify: many a song has been ruined by weak delivery, and in the late 80s and early 90s, a kind of middle-heavy, harsh, often tinny kind of production won out. Listen to any song from the entirely bass-free “… And Justice For All” by Metallica for a case in point.

The reason I say this all is to provide some context for this week's Missed Listen: the absolutely unremitting wall of sound that is Fudge Tunnel's Hate Songs In E Minor.

Let's deal with the elephant in the room first: yes, that band name has not aged well. At the time however, I'd argue it was just a band with a solid sense of humour naming themselves accordingly. I can't judge: I was once in a band called Log, and it definitely wasn't named after that lady in Twin Peaks. But just as in my band’s case, Fudge Tunnel were a trio with a sense of humour, which one glance at the liner notes to this record would confirm.

So granted, the band name isn't great. The album's title, however, is bang on the money. The Ronseal of album titles, as this was indeed a slew of intense heaviness delivered with a sledgehammer sound, the weight of which has barely been repeated since.

Hate Songs In E Minor is a sonic masterpiece. Not in the audiophile sense; in the sheer distillation of "heavy" into this monolithic aural assault. Few 90s albums have aged well. Steve Albini's work is a rare exception. So is Hate Songs In E Minor.

To me, this album is a masterwork of focusing on what made heavy music heavy, and then ratcheting those factors up to 11. Understanding how this is so heavy requires a quick detour into the sonics of metal: the distortion pedals primarily used to create 'that' sound.

Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi favoured (I believe) a ProCo Rat. Or if not a Rat, something very sonically similar: an overdrive sound that created a lot of distortion, and with it a lot of middle on the sonic spectrum: a harsh sound requiring bass to temper it.

Similarly, the Cali-centric rock of the 80s favoured slick Ibanez Tubescreamer pedals, and whilst the sound of these was certainly cleaner - in the sense that the overdrive was a little more focused - they remained tinny.

Essentially, most guitar work is about the middle and the top end. It is required to cut through the sonics delivered by the bassist and vocalist. The end result in the metal of the 80s and early 90s, however, always tends to be a sound that is light on bottom end, that crucial thick point in sound that delivers weight. There is bass there, but it's more like middle in real terms.

What makes Hate Songs In E Minor a masterpiece is the sheer ferocity of the guitar. I don't know for sure but I'd guess it was split and run into two effects pedals: one standard overdrive, the other some kind of germanium fuzz.

Fuzz pedals are more regularly the dominion of funk music and guitarists pushing for an edge on their solos. Summer Breeze by the Isley Brothers is a case in point; that creamy, thick sound delivered by Ernie Isley is arguably the most common way to hear it.

What Fudge Tunnel did was run the guitar through both pedals, and in doing so they created something else entirely: a fucking monster wall of noise that could shatter concrete. It says everything about this band's sound that the bass is, if anything, more in the middle range than the guitar.

So if metal is about both the riff and the way it is delivered, I would argue that on this album, Fudge Tunnel alchemised metal into its true sonic form: a clean, controlled, sonic nuclear bomb.

Listen to the first song for a case in point: the opening instrument is the bass, not that you might recognise it as such. But when that guitar drops in around the 1m06s mark, you realise instantly just how much weight this record carries.

When you have a sound this thick, this brutal, any riff is likely to sound incredible. I think Fudge Tunnel knew this, which explains why their songs are all technically simple. Arguably anyone with a year’s playing experience could play all of this.

Again, that album title was not aiming to be subtle: this is the sonic equivalent of someone sitting on your chest and punching you repeatedly in the face.

Granted, by 1991 when this album was released, speed in metal had given way to melody; more control, more focus on syncopated riffs. It says everything that Kerrang! magazine's top album of 1991 was Metallica's self titled "black album". (FWIW, Fudge Tunnel came in at #25.) But where albums like Soundgarden's "Badmotorfinger" (#2 on said Kerrang! list) delivered weight with melody and nuance, Hate Songs In E Minor just delivered one thing: absolutely massive riffs, delivered through a wall of sound Metallica could only dream of.

After releasing Hate Songs, Fudge Tunnel would actually further refine this sound into what I would say is their career apex, the insanely heavy Teeth EP. You only need to listen to SRT from that to see what I mean, delivering a brick shithouse sonic attack that somehow manages to sound oddly funky. The sheer thickness of the sound is truly something to behold.

Sadly, beyond that Fudge Tunnel would mess with the formula, arguably blowing it in the process. Creep Diets, their second album, diluted the wall of sonic attack in a weirdly hollow production, almost as if they were in denial as to what powered this mighty three piece along. Similarly the band's third and final album, The Complicated Futility of Ignorance, almost over-thought matters and floundered as a consequence. It lacked the clean, clear punch of the debut, and the songs lacked impact.

Perhaps the irony is that Alex Newport, the band's singer and guitarist, would go on to forge a fine career as a producer and engineer, working with anyone from Bloc Party to At The Drive-In. There's no questioning his chops when it came to sculpting the heaviest sound imaginable, so little wonder he found himself in demand after the band's demise.

Newport did also collaborate with Sepultura's Max Cavalera on the Nailbomb project, which might be best described as a mash of Cavalera's thrash chops, Fudge Tunnel's heaviness and Ministry's industrial edge. Not bad, but no Hate Songs In E Minor.

At the time, Hate Songs was wrongly categorised as noise rock, something I remain baffled by. To me, it is metal carved into its purest form. It is a celebration of heaviness; a bludgeoning, slow, pulverising slice of sonic brilliance that at the time truly stood alone.

Since then of course, entire genres have spilled forth echoing this kind of sound, but even then I have yet to hear anything which packed quite the intensity of this debut.

Truly one for the ages - if you can stand it.