Fucked Up are today’s most important hardcore punk band.

Not since Fugazi started slowing their songs down, and putting their guitars way down in the mix, has a band done more to push the ideas of what it means, musically, to be punk. Many of Fucked Up’s songs are longer than five minutes (one, “Year of the Pig,” comes in at just under 19 minutes), but not because of extended guitar solos or some lame prog shit like that (though I could totally see Fucked Up rocking Rush in the van), but because their songs are just relentlessly long, and for your average punk rocker, this must make for a totally confusing, though extremely enjoyable, live experience.

During longer songs, like the ten minute “Vivian Girls,” the punks in the crowd wander the floor lost and confused, returning to consciousness only when the band breaks out more traditional numbers like “Police” or “David Comes to Life.” But the whole thing works, very well, in fact, because Fucked Up don’t take themselves too seriously. Before “Jacob’s Ladder,” another long song, Pink Eyes, the band’s singer, says, “everyone hates this song, but I like it so we’re going to play it anyway.” He clownishly grandstands, occasionally taking the opportunity to wade through the audience, maybe to do a cartwheel. Still, many hardcore tropes remain. The mic is passed amongst a pile of male of male bodies as they claw their way onto the stage. It reminds you where you are, and that in the end, this is still hardcore.  More pictures under the cut.