Expat punk band When the Feverish Fail release debut CD at farewell show
Courtesy of When the Feverish Fail
By Jon Dunbar
One of the hardest parts of expat life in Korea is the constant farewells. It's especially compounded for expat bands, as losing one member incapacitates the whole band.
It's the same old story for
, a pop-punk band with members from Canada, the U.S. the U.K. and Ireland, which finally decided to call it quits now that their last remaining founding member is leaving the country.
The band name is a play on a Korean proverb about working feverishly. “Maybe we were implying we are failures from the beginning,” laughed Danny Bragg, who co-founded WTFF in 2015 and left it last year, moving to Vietnam for family reasons.
The WTFF's members look back on their time together as anything but a failure.
And they're not leaving before releasing their debut mini-album on
. They started recording the album last August at
.
“I think our departure triggered a greater desire for us to finally record,” Bragg said. “Our appreciation for what we were doing intensified because we knew it was coming to an end. But we shared something meaningful together and we will always look back on that with great nostalgia.”
But Bragg moved away before the album before they completed recording.
So they brought in Michael Travers, who used to be in the Daegu punk band Food for Worms before
, to finish recording bass and vocals.
“It's a nice way to send off the band with one last hoorah, but I feel this is becoming a cliche of sorts in the Korean music scene,” Travers said.
“It's part of life here, people coming and going. I think 90 percent of bands in Korea break up because a foreign member leaves the country or a Korean member does his army service. But on the flip side of that, many new bands start as people are arriving in Korea or looking to fill holes left by former members.”
They've already released
and
at Club SHARP in Mangwon-dong, western Seoul. Opening bands include Drinking Boys and Girls Choir, …Whatever That Means, Rudy Guns, Full Garage and Beacon.
“It would be hard not to miss Korea,” Bragg said. “I miss Club FF, Skunk and Club SHARP. And of course, I miss the band but hearing what they have produced brings back great memories and is a personal souvenir from my time there.”
Travers also plans to leave Korea next month, likely dealing a death blow to
. “I'll be sad to go, leaving so many friends behind, but you never know what's around the corner and one day I may be back,” he said. “Korea and Korean punk in particular will always have a special place in my heart.”
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local punk label World Domination, Inc
their first single, “Blueprint,”