NOFXHalf Album

A farewell to debt release? Already?

MORE: NECK DEEP: Rating: 8 Middle Fingers REVIEWS: BLOOM: Maybe In Another Life // BANKS ARCADE: DEATH 2 // MANNEQUIN PUSSY: I Got Heaven // JUDAS PRIEST: Invincible Shield

Bandleader Fat Mike admits in his press packet: “Was it worth it? Was it worth spending five years finishing the five songs on my double album project that I thought were the worst of the bunch? Was it a good idea to spend so much time raising the runts of the litter?” An epilogue to the Single and Double album cycle, their last ditch effort (see what I did there) Half Album is a fourteen minute closer that might be the punk rockers last laugh; if you buy this platter, that is. Fake-A-Wish Foundation is a pensive piano ballad about a guy called Brett faking cancer to score band merch that sounds like Fat Mike is taking Weezer‘s mickey, which isn’t altogether a bad thing. The off-chops single I’m A Rat is the NOFX-iest NOFX song on the (half) album; three chords and flailing drums as Mike shouts into the mic. Standard.

NOFX completionists will already be slamming the pre-order button even if this was just Fat Mike releasing bottled farts into bong water.

A rearrangement of a Cokie The Clown song (less said about that album the better) The Queen Is Dead starts with acoustics but before long unleashes double-kicks in that double-time, balls to the wall pop-punk the kind only NOFX can make. Humblest Man In The World takes on shades of jangle pop and garage rock, swapping out the distortion pedal for scuzzy overdrive, Fat Mike humblebragging about how great he is amid background voices in harmony. The Last Drag palm-mutes and croons in the vein of The Offspring‘s Self-Esteem or blink-182‘s Adam’s Song, a tongue in cheek yet heart-rending recital about an ex going through rehab and fucking it all up, bloated itself with weepy strings and skinny arms raised in defiance as Fat Mike’s brittle voice scrabbles through pompous orchestral sections, twangs of psychobilly weirdness, and of course, coke-blurred punk rock mania.

It’s hard to recommend forking out scratch for a literal half album (is that still a thing?) That said NOFX completionists will already be slamming the pre-order button even if this was just Fat Mike releasing bottled farts into bong water. I mean, you can do a lot worse in fourteen minutes.