Fyr, the new EP by superbly skillful Swedes GAUPA, is a downright infuriating listen. Well, to this embarrassed rock critic, at least. How does a band capable of writing and executing a record, even if it is just an EP, without the slightest blemish, scratch or scuff? Like a parasitic worm, that confounding question bores into the brain of the listener and refuses to dislodge itself from an ear canal, because it knows it’s onto something. Well, so do GAUPA, and they’ve clearly learned that if a parasite can enter your skull and nibble at your brain, they can execute similar sabotage with a quintet of songs that Do. Not. Quit.
Not to be confused with Guapo, a long-running experimental group that put out records on Ipecac and Neurot Recordings, GAUPA consists of vocalist Emma Näslund, drummer Jimmy Hurtig, bassist Erik Jerka Sävström and guitarist David Zol Rosberg. The band makes room for guesting musician Adrian Dal Cero, whose contribution of bagpipes — yes, you’re reading that correctly — are integral to first track “Lion’s Thorn”. They don’t dominate the song, like Bon Scott’s did with such pronouncement on AC/DC’s first real hit song, “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll)”. Dal Cero is more conservative with the use of the instrument, almost entirely employing it for the sake of setting the table on “Lion’s Thorn”. By the end of the song, Zol Rosberg and Jerka Sävström have taken over the stage with such force that the bagpipes seem like an afterthought.
On an album filled with surprises, there is practically none more notable than how “Lion’s Thorn” is followed by “Heavy Lord”, a rock track that’s got it all: righteous riffs, guitar histrionics, and a sense of tension that leads to explosions of rock brilliance. (You may have noticed that this review doesn’t use the word “metal”.) By all accounts, it should seem like a changing of the guard, but jarring the transition most certainly is not. GAUPA practically flaunt this great attribute of theirs — the ability to flow freely from Progressive to Stoner Rock to Doom and Folk and Psychedelic music. All the while, Guapa use Fyr as an opportunity to unleash their ferocious inner beasts — without letting a shred of friction come between each other, and without going so over the top with their blistering passages, lest they be slapped with the “M” word that, as stated above, they deliberately want to avoid.
In summation, Fyr is a masterwork of an EP that aims impossibly high and yet achieves a stratospheric stature that happens once in a blue moon when it comes to short-players. It may seem antithetical that it’s more difficult to craft an EP, given that they tend to be about half as long as their counterparts. Authors face a similar conundrum: can anyone who avidly reads literature claim with a straight face that there are more perfect short stories than there are novels? Of course not, and any argument to the contrary is effectively a denial of an objective truth.
That same line of logical reasoning applies to GAUPA’s Fyr, a compact treasure of a release that, like treasure collected under the premise of “spoils” during and after a war, should be shared and distributed among the masses. There is perhaps no greater challenge for the writers who contribute to Veil of Sound, and the readers who consume their writing, to proselytize about that super-secret band only four people know about, so the music fans can keep that under-appreciated band all to themselves. But it would be a travesty, if not sacrilegious, for a band like GAUPA – whose caliber of talent is so potent that they probably make like-minded bands weep – to continue to be as criminally overlooked as they have been since they originated. Eight (years) is enough.
