There are a lot of bands I feel sorry for these days. I think it’s important that we should. Pale, tired young men who drag their weary bodies around the country, playing to half empty venues, making little or no money, limping home in broken cars or vans and then doing it all over again. And why might you ask? Well for the most part (we hope) through love of the music they play. I don’t feel sorry for Osker. Not any more. The title “most hated band on Epitaph†can only point to one thing really. Osker didn’t give a shit. Or so they’d have you believe: T-Shirts emblazoned with “Fuck the Fans†logos; playing 2 minute sets; blagging a Guttermouth tour support and then proceeding to take the “Michael” every night of said tour and worst of all, whilst supporting NOFX one winter night, stopping to ask whether that same band had in fact put out anything remotely first-rate in the last seven years.
But put “Idle will Kill†in your stereo and suddenly its rethink time, by your second listen you could almost swear that Osker care, and not only that, but it seems they care rather a lot. Now musically it’s far, and I mean far from their last record, and yet it stinks with that same
sincerity, that same frustration and hunger which made “Treatment 5” such a damn excellent album in the first place.
Starting, with the rather appositely named “Patience†Osker make it clear they’re going to make you wait for your punk rock fix, instead choosing an up-tempo but down-dynamics acoustic song. Startlingly different approach to the acerbic opener “I Cannot†of Treatment 5. Dave Mendez’s chiming piano
chords and vocally Williams’ super earnest delivery smacks of something a bit different, a bit special. This is the case with every song on this album it seems, sounding spectacularly full for a three piece It’s Williams’ knack
for melody and song structure that starts to come to the fore, where songs like “Contentionâ€, “Disconnect, Disconnectâ€, “Going on the Instincts†and “Anchor†hum with an energy not seen for a long time previously or in fact since. I suppose this is what people mean when they say “All Killer, No Filler†and it is. It really, honestly is.
Steve