photo by Chiara Meierhofer Muscarà
The infamous Italian director Lucio Fulci created many of horror and exploitation cinema’s most memorable and vivid visions of the supernatural, sadistic and salacious. Zombi 2, The Beyond, City Of The Living Dead, The House By The Cemetery, and more left an indelible impression on the minds of many an impressionable youth. The Italian death metal band FULCI was so possessed by their countryman’s work, they named the band after him, with each album being a concept and tribute based on one of his films.
For the band’s fourth bloodthirsty full-length, and first for 20 Buck Spin after a steadily growing profile in the death metal underground over the last several years, FULCI presents Duck Face Killings, a homage to one of Lucio’s most depraved and reviled films, The New York Ripper. In his book Beyond Terror: The Films Of Lucio Fulci, author (and one time Coil member) Stephen Thrower says “The New York Ripper is a nihilistic vision of Hell on Earth. No one matters. No one cares… Fulci’s film offers a powerful vision of a world where love has curdled away into poison and death. Life goes on alright, as the soundtrack suggests over the credits, with its ‘just another day in the Big Bad Apple’ inflection and junk-funk facelessness: but in a climate of absolute zero.” Perhaps only the director’s most ardent apologists can confess to a guilty pleasure in the film.
Musically, FULCI unleashes a barrage of captivatingly gruesome riffs, gory pummeling, murderous slams, low-pitched guttural vocal patterns, and eerie intros and interludes. The band’s songwriting is consciously fixated on creating the most violent and sharpened music possible to convey the film’s extreme savagery, imagining a soundtrack for the most grisly and cynical slasher flick ever made. There’s a lot of luscious meat on these bones, dripping with hooks and all the colors of Lucio Fulci’s eccentric cinema of cruelty, while the psychotic killer hunts his victims with remorseless perversity and sick gratification, inexplicably quacking in a duck’s voice throughout…
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and such is the case with a film as sordid and odious as The New York Ripper. Described by the British Board Of Film Classification’s Carol Tpolski as, “simply the most damaging film I have ever seen in my whole life,” it was banned in the UK upon its 1982 release for the next twenty years. With Duck Face Killings, FULCI’s brutal delivery and graphic depiction of their mentor’s violent world shines like the glimmer of blood under the NYC street lights, shocking and wild. A testament to the controversial master in all its decadent guts and degenerate glory.
Sure to be one of the death metal highlights of the year, FULCI’s Duck Face Killings features guest vocal appearances by Lord Goat of legendary hip-hop act Non Phixion on “Knife” and Sherwood Webber of infamous death henchmen Skinless on “Human Scalp Collection,” and saxophone on “Il Miele Del Diavolo” by Mario Luce.
The album was recorded at Till Deaf Recording Studios, engineered and mixed by Ando Ferraiulo with assistant engineer Angelo Guierriero, with vocal recording and engineering handled by Stefano Santi at SPVN Studio, and was mastered by Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Cavalera Conspiracy, Tomb Mold). The cover artwork was crafted by Wes Benscoter (Autopsy, Sinister, Mortician, Broken Hope, Nile), conceptualized by Dome Diego and Fiore Stravino, the layout handled by Ascionemagro, and photography was handled by Chiara Meierhofer Muscarà.
The lead single from FULCI’s Duck Face Killings, “Rotten Apple,” is now streaming everywhere, including Bandcamp HERE and a visualizer playing at YouTube HERE.
20 Buck Spin will release Duck Face Killings on LP, CD, MC, and digital formats August 9th. Preorders and merch are now available at the label webshop HERE and Bandcamp HERE.
Duck Face Killings Track Listing:
1. Vile Butchery
2. A Blade In The Dark
3. Fucked With A Broken Bottle
4. Morbid Lust
5. Maniac Unleashed
6. Knife
7. Slashereality
8. Human Scalp Condition
9. Duck Face Killings
10. Rotten Apple
11. Sadistic Murder
12. Lo Squartatore
13. Stabbed, Gutted And Loved
14. Il Miele Del Diavolo
FULCI is also confirmed to join the month-long full US Devastation On The Nation Tour this Fall, joining Morbid Angel, Suffocation, Mortiferum, Uada, and Knoll. The tour runs from November 15th through December 14th, and tickets are on sale now HERE. European tour dates are also in the works.
FULCI – Devastation On The Nation Tour 2024 w/ Morbid Angel, Suffocation, Uada, Mortiferum, Knoll:
11/15/2024 Orpheum – Tampa, FL
11/16/2024 Masquerade (Heaven) – Atlanta, GA
11/17/2024 Brooklyn Bowl – Nashville, TN
11/19/2024 Warehouse Live Midtown -Houston, TX
11/20/2024 Come And Take It Live – Austin, TX
11/21/2024 House Of Blues – Dallas, TX
11/22/2024 El Rey Theater – Albuquerque, NM
11/23/2024 Nile – Phoenix, AZ
11/24/2024 House Of Blues – San Diego, CA
11/26/2024 Belasco – Los Angeles, CA
11/27/2024 Great American Music Hall – San Francisco, CA
11/29/2024 Bossanova Ballroom – Portland, OR
11/30/2024 El Corazon – Seattle, WA
12/02/2024 Metro Music Hall – Salt Lake City, UT
12/03/2024 The Oriental Theater – Denver, CO
12/04/2024 Admiral – Omaha, NE
12/05/2024 Avondale – Chicago, IL
12/06/2024 Crofoot Ballroom – Pontiac, MI
12/07/2024 King Of Clubs – Columbus, OH
12/08/2024 Brooklyn Monarch – Brooklyn, NY
12/10/2024 Palladium (Upstairs) – Worcester, MA
12/11/2024 Lovedraft’s – Mechanicsburg, PA
12/12/2024 Hooligans – Jacksonville, NC
12/13/2024 The Senate – Columbia, SC
12/14/2024 Culture Room – Ft. Lauderdale, FL
FULCI:
Dome Diego – guitar
Ando Ferraiulo – guitar
Fiore Stravino – vocals
Klem Diglio – bass
Edo Nicoloso – drums
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