Fixation Arc's new single, "The Void Stares Back," has been out a few days and the question I get asked the most is how the hell do you know those guys?
A fair one, considering they're all New Englanders and I'm the lone Hoosier calling in from the sticks of rust belt Indiana. Life leads a funny path sometimes.
Back in the early aughts, I was on the road selling merch with The Juliana Theory. Our summer tour stopped at an all-ages place in Burlington, VT, called 242 Main which sadly no longer exists, but was where I happened to see The Cancer Conspiracy for the first time.
I was thoroughly unprepared for the mind-blowing experience of a three-piece prog rock group that sounded like no less than six members on stage. During the set, Daryl Rabidoux, now the brains behind Fixation Arc, played a pedal-looped melody that rolled through several cycles before the rest of the band jumped into "The Summer of Andy," playing below, above and around this simple repeating phrase that would become an ear worm I'd end up still humming twenty years later.
The drummer, Greg, played saxophone and piano, sometimes simultaneously, all while beasting away on the kit. I'd never seen anything like it and made sure to pick up a copy of their demo, later pinging the email in the liner notes to get them to the Midwest where they'd end up playing a yearly fest I organized in Muncie and another show at a defunct auto body shop-turned punk club called The Volcano Room on Indianapolis' industrial east side.
In a funny aside, the bassist Brett Frattini (who'd go on to play in Daughters) left a navy blue button-down shirt at the Muncie show, which I found during cleanup. I didn't know it was his but it fit me perfectly, and for some unknown reason I wore to the Volcano Room show.
"Hey, are you kidding me, that's my shirt," he said nearly a year later. I hemmed and hawed, but gave it back. It was a nice shirt.
But I digress.
Both our bands eventually broke up, as most bands do. Post-Conspiracy, Daryl went on to work as a producer and engineer at The Radar Studio in Clinton, CT. A solar-powered recording hub for a burgeoning collective of New England post-rock bands that included Caspian, Junius, Constants and SOM. When Brazil would tour up in the northeast, it was quite common to share the stage with one or more of these talented groups, and we all eventually became friends.
After Brazil broke up, I found myself at Radar years later recording JC Autobody's "Turbo" with Daryl at the helm almost a decade after we'd last crossed paths. We laid down an album's worth of vocals through a case of light beer and it was like no time had passed.
Then the world rode out a pandemic, and a few years after the masks came off an mp3 landed in my FB Messenger. A technical thrash instrumental with Daryl on guitar, Philip Jamieson from Caspian on bass and Justin Foley from Boston's Killswitch Engage on drums. It was familiarly complex, and had Cancer Conspiracy DNA all through it even though it sat squarely in the realm of the metal cassettes I'd ride my Valterra board to back in the day.
"I'm curious to see what you can do," Daryl wrote. I laid down some sketches with my usual preening and stacking, and sent them over with an "it won't hurt my feelings if you hate this" disclaimer. I'd never sung true (not false) metal before (actually, this is a lie - I whisper-growled all through the Christmass funeral doom EP), but I'd consumed it voraciously my whole life so channeling Death Angel, Voivod and Overkill came easy.
It must have sounded alright, because more tunes would come my way, each one a rhythmic puzzle to decipher and a challenge that was one hundred-percent in my wheelhouse. SOM's Will Benoit expertly weaved them in with Daryl, Philip and Justin's crushing takes, and the next thing you know Fixation Arc was born. A high-speed shot of nostalgia and adrenaline between friends, both old and new.
So, I guess that's how I know these guys.
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What I’m reading: An Incomplete History of the Art of the Funerary Violin
What I'm listening to: Hellripper - The Affair of the Poisons
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