Insecure Men - Insecure Men

The Guardian 80

Asked to leave Fat White Family due to addiction issues, Saul Ademczewski cleaned up, convened with Childhood’s Ben Romans-Hopcraft, and made an album of hope and horror

It’s seldom that anything involving Fat White Family comes with a heartwarming story attached. They are, after all, a band who describe themselves as “an invitation, sent by misery, to dance to the beat of human hatred”, whose artistic obsession with the ugliness of life is apparently reflected behind the scenes. Their music springs from a grimy personal world of penury, mental torment and hard drug use: “heartwarming” isn’t really on the agenda.

And yet, there is something at least vaguely cheering about the story behind the eponymous album by Insecure Men, a project that really came to life when the band’s chief songwriter, Saul Adamczewski, was asked to leave temporarily after – and this is a very Fat White Family kind of story – refusing to vacate the Paris venue the band were playing on the night of the Bataclan attack because he’d arranged to meet a heroin dealer there later on.

Related: Childhood's Ben Romans-Hopcraft: 'I was too concerned with band mythology'