From the initial riff, Micheal Fordays proves there’s nothing ordinary about his seminal track, ‘Can’t Stop’. Blazing in with a fervour that pays no heed to stylistic confines, the performance sears itself into your senses. I never knew how much I needed to hear metal-injected symphonic ska punk, but now that I have, I’ve found my new sonic obsession.
Imagine a world where Apocalyptica meets Rancid, and you’ll envision what kind of riot Forday incited with ‘Can’t Stop’, which feeds a protestive, indomitable discourse through the equally as unreckonable instrumental arrangement.
This unrelenting energy was forged early on. Fordays honed his craft as a youngster, listening to rock guitar heroes before taking influence from horn players. His passion took flight in garage bands and, eventually, in the high-school-founded Mind Over Four, who laid down six albums on six labels while travelling across the US, Canada, Mexico, and Europe. Their impossible-to-pigeonhole sound was too metal for punk followers and too off-kilter for hard rock crowds, yet it fed Fordays’ determination to push limits until all sense of creative constraint falls away.
That boundary-bending ethic also propelled him into KMFDM, where he contributed his guitar chops on tour and appeared in the ‘Juke Joint Jezebel’ video and ‘Beat By Beat’ documentary. Under the Micheal Fordays moniker, he’s released a string of records from ‘Balls and Blind Faith’ to 2023’s ‘The Mind and Echoes’, all marked by an unshakeable creative vision. If ‘Can’t Stop’ is anything to go by, the forthcoming 2025 release will hold nothing back.
Stream Can’t Stop on all major platforms, including Spotify.
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Review by Amelia Vandergast