Doomed Confessionary: Pootchie (Fvzz Popvli)
Fvzz Popvli is a garage fuzz rock power trio from Rome, Italy. Founded by Pootchie and Datio in 2016, Fvzz Popvli delivers heavy fuzzy riffs in a straightforward and no-frills fashion. Their play a wild blend of Black Sabbath-style heaviness, the roughest garage punk band attitude à la The Stooges, and 70s psychedelia.
Fvzz Popvli have shared the stage with White Hills, Black Rainbows, Ufomammut, Karma To Burn, Mars Red Sky, Rotor, Naxatras, Lili Refrain, El Perro, Giöbia, Zodiac, DYSE, Powder For Pigeons, Hypnos, The Tazers, Mother Engine, The Midnight Ghost Train and much more.
Their fourth studio album »Melting Pop« will be released in various vinyl editions, CD digipack and digital on February 7th, 2025 with preorders available now from Heavy Psych Sounds.
Fvzz Popvli are Pootchie (guitar and vocals), Alex (bass) and George (drums).
Can you say a few words about your band?
Fvzz Popvli (to be read as Fuzz Populi) is kinda party band, a balanced power trio wich mix some heavy psych garage rock with screaming fuzzy sounds trying to sculpt a signature sound from our influences from the classic 70’s heavy rock to the 90’s indie rock.
What was the biggest challenge for the band?
Play everywhere as much as possible, thanks to all the lovely people from the underground rock scene, we can tour enough to make our dreams come true.
What can you be most proud of so far?
The happy faces of our audience having fun attending our gigs.
And of course being one of the easiest and friendly bands to manage in Europe, we are very happy to make everything smooth and make bookers and promoters feel relaxed and in a good vibe while working with us.
What was your biggest regret?
We really don’t have any regrets, maybe to not take part in bigger festivals but it isn’t a real regret. Hopefully we will do it in the future, we are working on it.
What was the best concert/tour so far and why?
Difficult question, we did many cool tours and some very cool festivals and it is very difficult to make a “best of” list.
But maybe the 4th leg of »Magna Fvzz« (our 2nd album) tour from 2019, was driving for 10.000km, playing in 2 amazing festivals (Tabernas and Berlin Swamp Fest) for an amount of 25 gigs across 8 countries in less than 1 month.
What was the biggest surprise on the music scene for you?
March 2023 1st leg for »III« (our 3rd record) when we played in Paris at “Le Supersonic”, was amazingly surprising to see so many teenagers diggin our music, it was like am I dreaming?
What is currently in your heavy musical rotation?
Like always Misfits, QOTSA, Hendrix, Cream, Taste and Black Sabbath.
What was the best advice you’ve ever been given as a musician?
Don’t rush on reaching your objectives and be patient, but most of all you must be ready to accept any criticism and convert it to an improvement.
Another great advice I feel to give on making music in general; never write music that needs 100% of your abilities and energies to be perfectly executed, you will regret it on tour, you should do something that costs you no more of the 60% of your energy for giving always the best to your audience also if you’re sick or tired as hell. Last but not least, don’t take too many drugs.
What are your guilty pleasures?
Recently I was loving the bassline of »Everybody« by Backstreet Boys, some months ago I was with my GF in a vintage store where they played this old hit on the radio.
Goin down from B flat to F in such an interesting way, very simple but it works, I didn’t notice when they released it, maybe i was too young and too much into Slayer hahaha.
Can you say something more about the current music scene in Rome / Italy?
Well Italy sadly, isn’t really a RnR country and in general with live music is pretty difficult, always less venues to play, not so many ppl are interested in the scene, and many of them don’t want to pay 10€ for a nice fresh bands, but is no problem spend up to 80€ for mainstream concerts (like Iron Maiden, Metallica, AC/DC exc.). Most of all the majority of rock users here want to play music so as you can imagine there are more musicians than audience.
Where can we see you live this year (concerts/tours)?
I can’t tell you anything right now, we have a schedule for the announcements! But you can follow us on our Social Networks for updates, but get ready cause in 2025 we gonna tour everywhere possible!
What are your plans for the future as a band?
Touring and playing bigger festivals as much as possible, having our humble band grow more and more!
Do you have any special plans for New Year’s Eve?
If I’ll not working in Rome playing in some NYE party, I’d gladly chill cause 2025 is gonna be pure flames.
How can people best support your band?
Come to our shows and buy our merch!
Do you have any message for your listeners?
Thanks for being with us, we can be a nice engine but without gas we would never do anything, the gas is you obviously!
And Bojan, hopefully we will meet somewhere in Slovenia next year!
Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well