Back in the go-go days of 2010, LA punk supergroup OFF! accomplished a feat that arguably won’t be repeated any time soon. They performed their entire first EP on broadcast television. To be fair, it only occupied at most six minutes of airtime, but it demonstrated that OFF! keeps it lean. Every release since that first EP has followed that same formula of say what you need to and get out. The first “long player,” the pragmatically named First Four EPs, clocks in at a brisk 18 minutes, while the band’s self-titled full-length squeezed 16 tracks into 16 minutes. So it’s almost a gasp and faint moment that OFF’s latest record, Wasted Years (Vice Records), is a relatively obese 22 minutes.
In contrast to their recent brevity, OFF’s members have clocked more than enough hours in their collective discography. Formed in 2009, the band is comprised of former Black Flag singer and on again, off again leader of the Circle Jerks Keith Morris on vocals, Burning Brides frontman Dimitri Coates on guitar, Redd Kross bassist Steven Shane McDonald, and Rocket from the Crypt and Hot Snakes drummer Mario Rubalcaba. Still, it would have been real easy to just bang out the songs on Wasted Years with little to no variation. Instead, the band puts a lot of concentrated ideas into each song on Wasted Years. But when the thought is done, it’s done.
Lyrically, Morris is pissed off and annoyed by, well, nearly everything. Life, environment, politics, interpersonal relationships—you name it, Morris is going to have an opinion on it. But he never sounds whiny or pointlessly angry. It’s a man focused on getting his point across. Perhaps it’s down to his stunning articulation, but not a single syllable on Wasted Years is obscured by the music, and vocally Morris has so sign of the years on him. The fire in his belly set three decade ago has not been extinguished.
If OFF! was ever worried about wasted time, this album shows that it’s not a factor. As for Wasted Years, if all that experience led to this high quality of hardcore punk, then long live the veterans!
Your Comments