Heroin + Dub

De Facto - Légende du Scorpion à Quatre Queues (2001) on Modern City Records

1. Legend of the Four-Tailed Scorpion
2. Mattilious Creed
3. AMkHz
4. Hoxadrine (Live)
5. Muerte Inoxia
6. Vesica Pisces (Live)
7. Cordova
8. 120E7 (Original Version)
9. Exit Template

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Not that I've ever done smack, but this album tastes like heroin. It's trippy. Not in a psychedelic sense, but in a spacey, detached, opiate sense. De Facto ceased to exist when band leader Jeremy Michael Ward died of a heroin overdose in 2003. They started, however, as a side project of At The Drive-in, with most of their output taking place in 2001, as At The Drive-in was self-destructing (i.e., more hard drugs).

This album brings the dub, and heavy. This is one of a few of the albums that I own, out of hundreds, that requires turning the bass down. And of those few albums, this is the one I have to turn the bass down the most. I've never heard an Ampeg ever sound this thick & heavy. The entire album was recorded live to cassette, so the fidelity can only be best described as having "tape grain." While it may not be high in production values, it's perfectly fitting for this dub. The melodicas, (which duel at times) with their drugged, high pitched warbling, are captured beautifully, with no distortion or clipping. As I've mentioned the bass is a heavyweight, not to be messed with. If you can find Legend of the Four-Tailed Scorpion on vinyl, the bass is hefty enough to compromise foundations.

De Facto recorded everything live, so the two live tracks from a 2001 tour of Europe sound no different than any of the others. Actually that's a bit of a lie, they're the strongest tracks on the album. That's only due however, to the energy of their performance. Ikey Owens' keyboards on "Hoxadrine" is probably the highlight of the album, as is Jeremy Michael Ward's sound manipulation two thirds of the way through "Vesica Pisces."

If anything needs to be reissued as a boxset, it's the De Facto discography. Each release was issued by a different label, most of which have long since vanished. I'd say "all of which," except I'm unsure about the France-based Modern City Records. They still have a website up, but it hasn't been updated for over two years.

A live version of "Cordova" can be found on the sister album, Megaton Shotblast. Super high quality studio recordings of "Vesica Pisces" & "120E7" are on the single, 456132015.