During the hype period of Much Music, a lot of great music hit Canadian airwaves. For me, this was the mid-’90s right up until the mid-2000s. Right at the turn of the century, a band called Fuel skyrocketed to the top of the charts with the song Hemorrhage (In My Hands). This was from the album Something Like Human released in the year 2000.
I thought Fuel was a great band despite the push they got. The musicians I associated with never mentioned Fuel or listened to their music. If they did I never knew about it. The face value of Fuel was that of the top of the charts group that got overplayed. It was understandable due to the press they got. In a lot of cases when you are young what is popular isn’t popular with you. Despite that Fuel was a rocking group!
Their single high charting single Hemorrhage (In My Hands) didn’t completely represent what the band sounded like. Something Like Human had a lot of other great tunes. That is what we will explore now.
Fuel – Prove
I am always about the riff in songs. This one is smoking! In this case, Prove’s main riff is a lead guitar line behind a rhythm line. It rocks and sounds massive in the mix. I can’t be too sure how they record the lead line but it sounds like a pitch shifter from using a Digitech whammy pedal. These were popular at the time. Lots of notable guitarists have used these pedals for specific effects.
Wall of Overdubbing
The sound on Prove comes from a lot of overdubs and production time. A lot of work needs to happen to put together songs that sound this way.
Prove has a subtle synthesizer part that reinforces the vocal line. It gives the vocal a laser-like quality. Listen to how the synth line get’s used. It doesn’t show up until the first chorus. It drops out at the vocal tag “Prove to me you’re something like human”, then it comes back for the second verse and chorus. It drops again for the guitar solo, and comes back for the last chorus. Then the song ends with the repeated vocal tag and they go out with the main riff. Pretty slick.
On top of the synth, we hear guitarist Carl Bell performing backing vocals to create. The mix of backup and lead vocals create a chorus-like effect during the verse and chorus. It is hard to tell if the vocals had any treatment done. What I do know is when you start combining vocal parts, the magic mixing frequencies create their own effects.
Chains that Bind musicians
When I heard this song it immediately reminded me of how Alice in Chains did there vocal production. I was still pretty young but I could tell what was going on. I knew that Carl Bell was doing the Jerry Cantrell part and Bret Scallions was doing the lead like Layne Staley. It was great because I loved both bands.
We have already talked about vocal production in a previous article about the Barenaked Ladies. The concept of vocal production is important. Vocals are at the forefront of pop music, and if they don’t get the right treatment the song can fall flat. Alice in Chains is great because their early work serves as a good model for a lot of rock bands back then and now.
Easter Eggs and Self Reference
The lyrics to this song have an Easter egg. The vocal at the end of the chorus mentions the name of the album. I always dug that because it was like the song was conscious of itself.
I always thought that songs that self-reference the album were a METAL convention. Iron Maiden did this a lot during the ’80s. Killers had a song called Killers, Powerslave had the song Powerslave, and so on. Other bands like Megadeth and Metallica did this too. I thought it was something you did as a metal group. When I heard Fuel have a lyric that self-referenced the album it was pretty exciting. To me, it said hey we are METAL too.
Live versus Recording
The Limp Bizkit article got us talking about how bands perform songs live. When songs have high production value how does it translate live? Let’s see if Fuel can replicate their song Prove live.
Yep, they sure can. Why? The song’s parts were written well. There is no background guitar for the main riff so the bass carries the rhythm live. It sounds bare compared to the recording, but it still works great because the bass has a gnarly tone and fills out the low end completely. This bass tone comes from a Warwick and Ampeg amplifiers. Killer tone. No wonder Ampeg is still a mainstay for rock bassists.
The vocals sound is full because Carl Bell is there to back up Bret Scallions live. No synthesizer happening either. You don’t miss it because the rest of the band is so massive they take up all the sonic space. The production isn’t hiding the core parts of the song and they only provide sonic support. Take away the support and the song still rocks live.
If you find this production talk interesting, and want to know more send me an email! Otherwise, enjoy the tune!
You can get the album on Amazon through this associates link:
Wanna party like it’s 1997? Click here.
There is bot named Wilbert that likes to eat my website, so I cannot have a email sign up form anymore. If you want access to new content all you gotta do is email me! Newduereview@gmail.com
If you do that, I can enter you into a email list and send you goodies before they come out.