OFF! – Wasted Years

When it comes to musical pedigree not many are going to compete with OFF! Boasting former members of Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Redd Kross, Rocket From the Crypt and Burning Brides they are a band that know their way around the music business and in particular the punk scene.  Their latest album Wasted Years was released earlier this year and despite being 16 tracks long manages to come in at just over 23 minutes.

If you are at all familiar with OFF! you probably know what this album sounds like.  It is, to start throwing out cliches left right and centre, a  sonic blast of raw punk fury (it’s a good one ain’t it?).  In a time when the wider worlds perception of punk and hardcore is moving further and further away from what they were originally, OFF! are a reminder of where these scenes started.  Blistering one minute songs, the longest on the album is 2 minutes 15 and most barely break over the 1 minute 15 barrier, about how shit the world is.

That’s not to say this is a been there, done that record.  OFF! do enough to change up their game that you shouldn’t feel like you can just miss it out.  Whether it be the more slowed down trudging riffs of “No Easy Escape” (although this is using the phrase slowed down in context to the rest of the album) or just the general jittery feel that is evident in the riffs of tracks like “Death Trip on the Party Train”, there is something about this album that makes it stand out.  This is a group of guys that are well aware that sounding slightly dangerous is a good thing and with the unusual time structures and the slightly erratic feel of the music they achieve that, even if the song formula they tend to stick to is one we have all heard before.

OFF! are a great band, but they’re not the band that will make you love hardcore punk when you previously hated it.  They are a band that know what they can do and are fantastically good at doing it.  It doesn’t matter if they are going full primal hardcore like “Void You Out” or more traditional punk rock like in “You Must be Damned” these guys do punk better than nearly anyone else.

For Fans of: Black Flag, The Sex Pistols

Choice Cuts: Void You Out, You Must Be Damned