FAUS

Off the beaten path is Spokane, Washington. And two hours north of that is the middle of nowhere: Colville, Washington. A sleepy town anchored by mining and timber. Where yokels and hicks drive from all around for its prized drive-in theater.
It’s where Ezra Christopher, Mike Angelini, Paul Patton, and Anthony Perez brushed shoulders in the hallways of their tiny farm high school. And it’s where their collective boredom, raw talent and adolescent angst collided to form FAUS. Their self-made brand of experimental hardcore gashed through the country quiet like a thunderclap — and Colville was far from ready for them. FAUS moved to Spokane in 2007 — a town with some semblance of a music scene — to try their sound out on bigger crowds. The kids went nuts. One of them was Alex Chaffin, who eagerly joined the band on bass just hours before a FAUS show.
What FAUS makes is music that could have occurred nowhere else. Free from heavy outside influence, Christopher, Perez and Angelini unknowingly wove weird time signatures with jangly guitars, Hulk-like drumming and half-talking/mostly-screaming vocals. Onstage, FAUS performs like sugar-snorting teenagers in an inflatable fun gym — fast, furious and fucking loud. When they came to Spokane, they shook the foundations of the deeply rooted hardcore scene — asking every hardcore kid to question their music and push their tastes further.
Doggedly committed to the riffs and feedback that run through their veins, FAUS plans to take their show on the road this fall. Theirs is a brand of hardcore so unique and so revolutionary, audiences everywhere will gladly drink FAUS’s Kool-Aid.
Leah Sottile --
Music Editor --
The Pacific Northwest Inlander