Review From The Crates: Fudge Tunnel’s Creep Diets

We all have “go-to” albums in our collections — records we know we can always count on to quench any emotional requirement. When I want to immerse myself in feelings of home, I play something like Alice In Chains’ Jar Of Flies. If I need to get rid of stubborn tears, I know Willie Nelson’s “Angels Flying Too Close To The Ground” or Blind Melon’s “Soul One” will always unstick the waterworks. If I want to lift something heavy, just about anything from Pantera’s 2nd, 3rd, or 4th albums will get the job done.

I’m pretty sure almost all of us also have those songs or albums that exist in our mental outreaches — they’re tethered to us, somehow, but they’re hardly ever top of mind when it comes time to throw something on. Songs or albums that claw their way back into your face once every few years to remind you of just how perfect they were for their time — how perfect they were for you in that time. Today, that album is Fudge Tunnel’s Creep Diets.

Fudge Tunnel entered my sphere of interest in 1993 thanks to a night-time Headbangers Ball session at my apartment in Costa Rica. The Ball was a must-watch in those days, especially in Central America, where record stores had limited options on the shelves and the Internet was still but a whisper in the wind. The video was for “Grey”, the first track on Creep Diets, and the song that introduced me to the sludge metal subgenre (a combination of doom metal and hardcore punk rock mixed with sometimes-distorted, screamed vocals).

Oh, I know, I too get annoyed with the sea of minutiae that is music subgenrification — in this instance, I extend beyond simply calling Fudge Tunnel a “metal” band because its particular sound opened my eyes to an entirely different kind of heavy music. I also think there’s an important distinction because Fudge Tunnel, despite being from Nottingham, England, existed just beyond the outlying outreaches of the most extreme sounds that the grunge genre produced. I find it impossible to listen to Creep Diets without hearing the more anomalous, dissonant moments of Nirvana’s storied catalog. Singer and guitarist Alex Newport has said the band was listening to Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. while writing the album. You can hear it in the songs — that stripped-back attack, almost lulling you into a false sense of security before assaulting you with a wall of violent noise.

There’s a beautiful aspect to the fervent disarray that is Creep Diets. While arguably the “poppiest” album of the band’s career, it’s anything but easily accessible. Newport’s vocals range from barely audible, whispered croons to gravely caterwaul. The music is a land, sea, and air deployment — it comes at you from all directions and hits very hard. Despite the hulking sound, songs like “Grey” and “Ten Percent” are beyond catchy. Remix “Don’t Have Time For You”, add a more accomplished vocalist, and you have a massive hit in ’93. The title track, “Face Down”, and “Good Kicking” are all-out bludgeonings, while the Black Sabbath cover bonus track “Changes” weaves you through multiple levels of Hell.

The album was catchy enough that Columbia Records took notice. Fudge Tunnel’s record label, England’s Earache Records, had signed a U.S. distribution deal with Columbia. As part of the agreement, Columbia had a clause included that gave it something called a Right of First Refusal (ROFR). Essentially, it meant the label could choose which Earache albums it would support in the U.S. The problem with the agreement, at least from a band’s perspective, is that while Columbia would distribute your record, it wouldn’t actually put any money into backing up the release with a tour (unless the label was given total control). That left smaller labels like Earache without the resources to organize the sized tours necessary to capitalize on the added album exposure. Seeing this, Fudge Tunnel agreed to a deal with Columbia that netted the band tour support in exchange for a “more professional” video for “Grey”. According to Newport, the video cost the band $30,000 and was played on MTV in the U.S. exactly once (at 11:30 PM). This didn’t stop Columbia from trying to order Fudge Tunnel around (including telling the band to change its name). Fairly quickly, all parties decided to step away from all the acrimony and go their separate ways.

Because Fudge Tunnel toiled along the outer limits of multiple classifications, pinning it down for mass consumption was all but impossible. Too heavy for grunge or punk rock, too chaotic for alternative rock, but not “traditional” enough for heavy metal, the members of Fudge Tunnel instead chose to walk their own path. In doing so, they created an album that brings me immense joy thirty years after the fact whenever it calls out to me from the, well, grey.

Track List

1. Grey 10/10

2. Tipper Gore 7/10

3. Ten Percent 8/10

4. Face Down 8/10

5. Grit 6/10

6. Don’t Have Time For You 8/10

7. Good Kicking 7/10

8. Hot Salad 5/10

9. Creep Diets 7/10

10. Stuck 6/10

11. Always 5/10

12. Sweet Meat* 5/10

13. Changes (Black Sabbath Cover)* 9/10

Grade: 70

*Bonus tracks not available on the initial U.K. or U.S. releases.