When you talk about seminal punk bands of the 1990’s, there are a few usual suspects that tend to crop up. Green Day, Rancid, Bad Religion, Pennywise, The Offspring, maybe Blink 182. In the year 2000, a whole new breed of punks came to the fore. say hello to Less Than Jake, New Found Glory, The Ataris and Sum 41.
But one band that cleared the way for this whole new breed of snotty So-Cal punk rock, and a band that finds themselves in both categories, was NoFx. And Fat Mike’s crew produced one hell of an album way back when. It was called ‘Punk In Drublic.’ And boy does it rock.
NoFx now are a different proposition to the band of old. Now they seem to recycle borrowed riffs and have almost become a cliche of themselves. At least on the piss-poor ‘Pump Up The Valuum’ they have. But a couple of albums before that they released a CD which will go down in history as being a defining moment in the punk world.
How many albums can boast one or two anthems, let alone half a dozen? ‘Linoleum,’ ‘Leave It Alone,’ ‘Don’t Call Me White,’ ‘The Brews,’ the list is endless. And they are all here. Anthem after anthem, this is punk-rock at its very best.
Fat Mike is at his most defining, blending snearing vocals with cutting guitars. The lyrics makes statements – see ‘Perfect Government,’ yet quite clearly take the piss at the same time – see ‘Don’t call Me White.’
There is really little point me wasting superlatives on this record. I shouldn’t even be wasting my time urging you to buy it. I mean, if you’re reading Punktastic then you should know something about punk, right? And if you know anything then you’ll know that this CD is nothing short of phenomenal. So what is the point in carrying on with this review? I think I’ll stop right he
Paul Savage