NOFX-heavy petting zoo
May 16th 2009 09:58
This is the first NOFX album I ever purchased. I was never a huge fan of them before hand. I was more into metal and didn’t give punk much look in and certainly didn’t give NOFX much credit. But as I started to get into punk rock around the time it exploded in 1994, I found an appreciation for this band and when they brought out this album, i gave it a shot.
I remember sticking the disc in my CD player. The intro started after a few seconds. A simple bass riff followed by a short 45 second burst of a track. It went straight into the next track with it’s distorted ska riff and felt my head bobbing along as I read the lyrics in the sleeve. 38 minutes later it was over. And I wanted more. Maybe it was because I was used to 70 minute Iron Maiden and Metallica records but I wanted more great songs. So I hit play and listened to the record again and fell in love with NOFX.
To this day, I still rate this as my favorite NOFX album. Fans will say White Trash or Punk In Drublic were their best albums and alot will trash this record as slower, but I love it. Tracks like “Freedom Lika Shopping Cart”, “Bleeding Heart Disease”, Hotdog In A Hallway” were good crafted songs. You could sing along to the harmonies over the riffs. The songs were varied in themes. “Love Story” is a tale of relationship breakdown. “Liza” is about a lesbian. “The Black And White” looks at sexual confusion. “Drop The World” looks at the pressure of study on kids. It wasn’t dark and gloomy and about death. And I found it uplifting. To this day I credit punk rock as helping lift me out of depression and NOFX were a key band for this.
But my favorite is the hand written liner notes by Fat Mike and his rant on the last page about how they do it their way and don’t need the help from corporate radio, tv and labels and asks them “to stop bugging us” and thats what I liked about this band. They do it on their own terms. DIY, thats how to do it.
So is this the record I recommend first time listeners to get. Yeah. It may not be their best, but it is easy to digest and is a good fun record and fans shouldn’t criticize it to much.
I remember sticking the disc in my CD player. The intro started after a few seconds. A simple bass riff followed by a short 45 second burst of a track. It went straight into the next track with it’s distorted ska riff and felt my head bobbing along as I read the lyrics in the sleeve. 38 minutes later it was over. And I wanted more. Maybe it was because I was used to 70 minute Iron Maiden and Metallica records but I wanted more great songs. So I hit play and listened to the record again and fell in love with NOFX.
To this day, I still rate this as my favorite NOFX album. Fans will say White Trash or Punk In Drublic were their best albums and alot will trash this record as slower, but I love it. Tracks like “Freedom Lika Shopping Cart”, “Bleeding Heart Disease”, Hotdog In A Hallway” were good crafted songs. You could sing along to the harmonies over the riffs. The songs were varied in themes. “Love Story” is a tale of relationship breakdown. “Liza” is about a lesbian. “The Black And White” looks at sexual confusion. “Drop The World” looks at the pressure of study on kids. It wasn’t dark and gloomy and about death. And I found it uplifting. To this day I credit punk rock as helping lift me out of depression and NOFX were a key band for this.
But my favorite is the hand written liner notes by Fat Mike and his rant on the last page about how they do it their way and don’t need the help from corporate radio, tv and labels and asks them “to stop bugging us” and thats what I liked about this band. They do it on their own terms. DIY, thats how to do it.
So is this the record I recommend first time listeners to get. Yeah. It may not be their best, but it is easy to digest and is a good fun record and fans shouldn’t criticize it to much.
| 30 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
subscribe to this blog