There has always been a lot to admire about NOFX. Over the course of their almost 40-year-long career, the Los Angeles punk band have remained both steadfastly independent and obstinately uncompromising when it comes to their music.
Occasionally their loutish indifference has been to their detriment, as with frontman Fat Mike’s ill-advised joke about the 2017 Las Vegas concert shooting.
The band’s 15th album – not a double album, despite its title – is as determinedly louche as ever. There is nothing musically captivating here, although drummer Erik Sandin’s work on tracks such as My Favourite Enemy and F**k Day Six – which comically recounts Mike’s stint in rehab – is tremendous.
Elsewhere, the brisk tempo, terse basslines and sloganeering lyrics sound stuck in the past; even their one-time rivals Green Day have somewhat progressed since the 1980s.
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The exceptions are two very different songs: Is it Too Soon If Time Is Relative? is a puerile – and plain confusing – takedown of Stephen Hawking (“He may be smart/ But to me he’s just a creepy narcoleptic mime”), while Three Against Me, an ultra-personal track about Mike’s childhood abuse at the hands of his brothers, sounds like a musical therapy session.
The frontman is on record as saying that this is their “funniest” release, but that he “wouldn’t pick it as one of our better albums”. Regardless of your predisposition to NOFX, it’s difficult to disagree with him. nofxofficialwebsite.com
