Fucked Up Needed 20 Years to Get Through 12 Animals

In 2006, a Toronto hardcore band that had been yelling since 2001 released a record called "Year of the Dog" and quietly gave itself homework. There are 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac. Fucked Up would get to every one of them, eventually.

Eventually took a while, because the band kept getting distracted by being good. "The Chemistry of Common Life" won the 2009 Polaris Music Prize, a lot of respectability for a band whose name can't go on the radio. "David Comes to Life" followed in 2011, a rock opera set in Thatcher's Britain that Spin named its album of the year. The zodiac kept ticking underneath, release by release, until "Year of the Horse" made nine in 2021.

Three animals left. They went big.

On Sept. 30, 2025, the band announced "Grass Can Move Stones," a closing trilogy running almost five hours, loosely drawn from the Chinese classic "Journey to the West." It follows two characters, Monkey and Good Goat, down a long road of trouble and self-discovery, with singer Damian Abraham voicing Monkey. "Year of the Goat" arrived in pieces starting that October, and "Year of the Monkey" followed this year, each with guests cast as characters: a punk band staging a radio play with distortion pedals.

"Year of the Rooster," the double LP that ends the whole cycle, is out now on Tankcrimes. Keith Morris of Black Flag and the Circle Jerks is in the cast. So are Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Debsey Wykes of the 1980s cult band Dolly Mixture and Chris Hansell of Warthog. The two singles, "Good Goat Saw a Leaf" and "I Hear the Hooves," read like chapter titles, because they are.

We haven't heard the whole record yet, so take this as a bet, not a review: the commitment is the point. Most bands can't agree on a second album. Fucked Up spent two decades finishing a calendar, and it saved a part in the last chapter for the man who sang "Nervous Breakdown" in 1978. It's the same kind of long game the Rock Hall rewards this weekend, when Joy Division and New Order go in, half a century after two Salford kids watched the Sex Pistols. And if you'd rather your Friday box set come with a loft and a Talking Heads remaster, "Fear of Music" is out now too.