The Essence of Punk Rock

In my eyes, Punk is the ANTI-Genre, or ANTI-Trend if u will… It started with the Ramones and Sex Pistols… until then, bands were generally the same when it came to the apparel… These 2 bands broke the trend and dressed up like bad-asses… Punk was born Punk lost it’s direction when people started considering it a Genre that had certain criteria… Punk is not a trend… it’s NOT conforming to a sound… Nirvana was punk because during the reign of the hair-metal bands he decided not to go with the trend… Punk will rise again… Just look at what’s on the radio and MTV now… It’s a bunch of trendy little whiners that focus more on their IMAGE than writing compelling music… even their music writing is becoming too fucking trendy… if i hear one more “three days grace” sounding vocalist i’m going to shoot myself… same goes with the tween bands that wear more make-up than my sister… we’re just repeating the 80’s with all this glam-rock… soon a band will rise and they won’t need the make-up to attract fans… their music will bring people to their feet again and all these shit bands will have nobody to imitate… cuz how do you imitate “good music” with no real talent…

NOFX - Coaster

So, punk is dead is it? Not of as 2009. Over the last 20 years we saw the rise and fall or rock as we know, from the initial grunge and garage rock in Seattle, stimulated by Kurt Cobain and his individual punk view.

Cobain combined his newly found punk rock views with his childhood influences of Neil Young and Leadbeddy to lead the revival of rock from the pop and dance of the 80s.

NOFX seems to come out of this era and produced some real solid punk rock riffs even after the greats in the 70s. Short, sharp, fast and sweet with strange nicknames like most punk rockers, led by Fat Mike, they produced one of my favourite albums of the last 25 years – Punk in Drublic.

Nowadays, in their 40s they still have the same energy and vigor although their intensity has diminished yet they still know how to produce a fucking rocking album.

Coaster begins with We Called It America and followed by The Quitter of which both have a high intensity rhythm and pretty convincing lyrics. The album works really well as the opening 2 songs follow through and work as one whole opening title – with the lyrics ‘You wanna be a winner? You gotta quit thinking about quitting’ making a great firing up song.

After some slower (you know it was coming) tracks we get to Blasphemy with a great catchy riff and faster to get those heads banging and legs jumping. Moving on, we reach Creeping Out Sara, with comical lyrics on Tegan and Sara.

Back with the faced paced music and good riffs mixed with the punk-inspired solos Eddie, Bruce and Paul and Best God in Show is catchy and reminds me too much of a poo song but rebounds with it reggae beats – every NOFX has something foreign.

Don’t forget the jazz guitar and trumpet in I Am An Alcoholic to move back to their weird humourous fillers and ends with One Million Coasters, a great finale with strange comparisons yet gets me jiggy with the retro references.

Rock on NOFX!

7.5/10