Hailing from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Fin Fang Foom returns with a much more somber long-player in With the Gift Comes the Curse. Their second full-length, With the Gift Comes the Curse, is a dark, piano-driven set of songs anchored by melancholy vocals with rich delivery. This new album captures hypnotic drones and transforms them into something compelling and riveting.

The vocals are subdued and effective, with swirling guitar and keyboard lines producing a concentrated fog of activity. The album is propelled by unconventional rhythms and beats that skitter around vivid melodies. Fin Fang Foom has succeeded in reining in disparate elements of their earlier efforts and condensed them into formidable, weighty pieces. These songs are cohesive and collected into an arrangement of solemn design.

Listeners will be captivated by doleful wails that rise and fall under surging melodic lines. While dark in nature, Fin Fang Foom doesn’t let the mood lapse into bleakness; there is simply too much action to let inertia glide in. Rather, this talented trio has created a work of dimmed, expressive beauty hypnotic to witness and hear, a beautifully subdued effort that springs forth from a quiet turmoil.

With the Gift Comes the Curse was recorded by Andy Baker (Mercury Program, Japancakes) in Athens, Georgia, at Chase Park. Chad Clark (Smart Went Crazy, Beauty Pill) mastered it at Silver Sonya Studios in Washington, D.C. Fin Fang Foom have played and toured with such bands as Engine Down, Mercury Program, Milemarker, Twelve Hour Turn, Cursive, and Blonde Redhead. They plan to tour Europe in spring 2003 and will tour the U.S. and Japan throughout 2003 in support of their new album.

“With Fin Fang Foom it seems that the label may have discovered a hard-to-pin-down act that really can't be classified as anything but damn good.”
- Basement Life

“At their root, they’re a three-piece post-punk band, but they do so many things other bands of this ilk have neither the talent nor the balls to pull off.”
- Ink 19