Thirty seconds into my transatlantic phone call with Fucked Up frontman Damian Abraham and I've already found out two rather unexpected things about the punk singer: first of all he hosts a daily MTV style music show in his home city of Toronto, Canada (quite unexpected); and secondly that he and the rest of the band are fans of Shed Seven (very unexpected).

On a Richter scale of shocking information though, these facts would perhaps only register at a meagre five and seven (respectively), while the news that Fucked Up's new album - out 6 June - is to be, wait for it... a rock opera, would surely be a ten.

The rock opera: the final word in decadent capitalist-pig rock. The kind of tediously long, navel-gazing fodder from which faded rock dictators cling onto power by their filthy fingernails. So then, you'd think this kind of project might jar somewhat with the sneering, uber cynical, anti-everything, hardcore punk band's ethos? Even their name screams ‘We don't fit; we don't care; we don't give a f*ck’. They had their reasons though (see below), and so David Comes To Life, the band's third studio album, will be split across four acts, see more female vocals, feature a range of characters, and be set to a love story in 1970s war torn Britain. Have they gone mad? We'll let Abraham explain...


So... what's up?
We're just kind of gearing up to the record coming up. We're at the weird stage where things are hotting up again. It's not like we've been on hiatus or anything; we've been playing a lot and recording constantly, but when you finish an album it's a bit like 'Okay, here it goes again'. We're looking at tourdates and stuff. Things are really picking up. Plus I've just moved into a new place so I'm busy sorting that out.

Oh? How's the moving in going? Stressful?
Well, I'm in my house unpacking a massive amount of boxes. My wife and I just moved and I think around 90 per cent of our boxes are books and records. I'm also watching TV and thinking that Donald Trump is quite possibly the most terrifying politician in North American history in quite a long time...

Undoubtedly true. But, the question on everybody's lips: why a rock opera?
I think after the last record we just felt that there was such an unbelievable amount of praise heaped on it that we could never possibly live up to it in any way, shape or form; it kind of felt like an albatross hanging over us. At the same time we also thought that we just didn't want to make a similar kind of record. It didn't feel like that would be interesting. So we just sat down and said 'Let's do something we've never done before, something that will challenge us'. It kind of started out as a joke and then the more we thought about it the less of a joke it became and the more of a serious challenge it turned into...

There will people saying 'it goes against all that you're about.' How do you respond to that?
Absolutely. I mean, I don't feel the same way but anyone that does say that is totally entitled to say that. It's weird because I'm in the band and don't feel like that but if I wasn't in the band I think I'd be the first guy that would be yelling that at us. You know, I can sort of understand people saying that but when we formed the band we didn't have any vision of popularity; you know, I mean we didn't even think our friends would like us. So all we've ever tried to do are things that seemed like fun and interesting to us as a band. I mean, when we play live we're there to entertain and give people what they want but when it comes to writing a record all that we want to do is to be honest to ourselves. And if we tried to write the same thing over and over I think that would be dishonest to ourselves.

Are you the type of band that doesn't care about being liked?
Don't get me wrong, I'm a shallow person. I like being liked. But, as a band, basically, I think that if no one liked us we'd still be making the same sorts of records. I think certain bands start with a plan, like 'Here's how we get from X to Y, and here's how we get popular' and things like that. We kind of stumbled haphazardly the whole way through. We've just kind of taken things as they've come to us more than looking for world domination.

The album's set to a play. Was it actually intended to be performed?
I would love to see that happen. I don't know if it ever will, but we definitely wrote it to be performed and the structure is there for that to happen. When it comes to the record though, it is very much still a straight forward record, despite some of the weirdness. The songs are still written from a personal and emotional level, but they just have these weird characters attached to them this time. We wanted to make sure it was still a record, and wasn't completely weighed down by these concepts, but at the end of the day could basically still be conceived as a rock opera.

Where did you get the idea for the play?
It came about in a very weird way. I had written a story that I wanted and Mike (Haliechuk) had written one too and those were very much at odds with each other, so in the end we decided to scrap both of those ideas and we sat down with the band and kind of flushed out one central idea in which we tried to incorporate all of the things that we were interested in, like we are all very much into English culture, and especially that time period, so we all love punk records and Smiths songs so we decided to set it in the late '70s / early '80s. We were also interested in things like the importance of labour and the importance of power and something else that we don't often talk about in the band which is the idea of love and loss and the idea that everything is about to fall apart and we just wanted a way of bringing all those things together. I think I'm more proud of it than anything we've ever done. I'm really, really happy with how it turned out.