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Like another SoCal-based bass player (Mike Watt) once said, "You won't know where the wall is until you push off it" and, since moving back to Fat Wreck, that's exactly what NOFX has tried to do. Ironically, the band hasn't found the wall just yet; every endeavor that the band has undertaken has proven to have satisfactory results (see the 7" of the Month Club, the tour that Backstage Passport documents) and the band continues to have fun everywhere it goes. Each time a "risky" project works out, it only adds fuel to the band to see what they can try next and fans always clamor to find out what's coming; after twenty-seven years, that is nothing short of incredible.

This is Part Four for Ground Control's NOFX discography review. For Part One, click here , click here for Part Two and click here for Part Three.


The Greatest Songs Ever Written (By Us)
(Epitaph, 2004)
When even considering the possibility of a 'NOFX greatest hits' compilation, it really is necessary to take the idea with a grain of salt for a couple of reasons. For example, in order to regard a song as a hit, one has to be able to observe the notice of said song by a multitude of demographics and media outlets, and NOFX has never received (or cared to receive) a tremendous amount of either. Chart notice has been scant with Punk In Drublic being the highest Billboard chart entry to date [the album reached number twelve on the Heatseekers chart –ed] and two albums have been certified Gold [Punk In Drublic received its' Gold certification six years after its' release –ed] but, because both NOFX and Fat Wreck have gone to great pains to not be observed by the RIAA, there may be more and no one would know. True, songs have been played on the radio during the average person's waking hours (a couple have even been banned – so that qualifies as notice) but it has often been on specialty shows that focus on punk rock bands so one would expect NOFX to appear there, but they haven't been featured much if at all beyond that on mainstream radio; so what's a hit here?

Well, it's a little more complicated than that and NOFX probably knew it; that's why this album is called The Greatest Songs Ever Written (By Us). Collected here are twenty-seven of the most memorable cuts from the band's career to date – the songs that fans would say are some of the best that they always love to hear when they see the band live – assembled into one economical and easily consumable package. Here, those “Gee whiz!” moments when the band has really shone like “Linoleum,” “The Longest Line,” “Leave It Alone,” “Separation Of Church And Skate,”  “It's My Job To Keep Punk Rock Elite” and “Party Enema” all get the chance to rub elbows and stand together to present a really good, very desert-only romp.

That's fine and there's no denying that each of these twenty-seven songs is certainly a key track in NOFX' songbook, but if this disc was a listener's first introduction to the band, they'd swear that NOFX hasn't changed very much since it started; basically speaking, the material included from the band's early records could just as easily have been released yesterday and vice versa, and there are some similar riffs and motifs throughout. For those that don't know any better, that could be seen as artistic stagnation and that's just not the case; removed from the context of each album, it's impossible to see NOFX' growth from grainy melodic hardcore band (the Liberal Animation era) to one of the foremost bands in modern punk rock. If The Greatest Songs Ever Written (By Us) was the only foundation on which the uninitiated were basing opinions, the argument could justifiably be made that the band has simply played the hell out of a formula and will do so as long as it continues to pay off – but that's not so. While The Greatest Songs captures NOFX at its most anthemic (although even with that said, somehow “Here Comes The Neighborhood” has been omitted and “Shut Up Already” appears – and that doesn't seem right), and each song still packs all of the wallop it did when it was first released as well as having the instant familiarity of what would have been radio hits in a perfect world, something just doesn't scope about the set; it's a good listen and worth the money for a new potential fan to get started, but it's not a complete examination by any stretch of the imagination.


7” Of The Month Club
(Fat Wreck Chords, February, 2005 – March, 2006)
Every time a band has a new album out or it's on the cusp of release or otherwise needs promoting, that band will begin talking to different press and media outlets to let fans know what's coming, when, who worked on the album in question and what the record means for them. Those things all (hopefully) will be able to pique a fan's interest to hear new material and get the machine rolling, sure – but the other thing that invariably gets discussed is the “writing process” that first sparked these songs and what variables in it might have been different that ultimately caused this record to sound like it does. That gets talked about a lot and many of the stories attached to a recording end up being the things that fans treasure (fans will discuss this minutiae endlessly), but how many of those fans actually understand it? In many ways, the writing and recording processes that created a record are an intriguing little annex of this undiscovered artistic country and non-musicians simply cannot understand; they just know it can take a while, can destroy a band or may not turn out in a way that they can palette, or be the next in a series of incredible work. Some bands might call the perpetual explanation that a new record seems to require daunting because there are only so many times someone can rehash and repeat the same words, but NOFX found a better. More interesting way to present listeners with a map of their process through the creation of the album that would become Wolves In Wolves' Clothing that could also make a bit of money: the idea was to show fans the process of writing, refining and polishing a set of songs being considered for the album by releasing a series of demos. The sweeten the deal and make the idea more attractive, NOFX elected to conduct the release as a subscription service and put the songs on a fetish property (7” vinyl) in very limited pressings so once they were gone, they were gone. Through the year-long stretch of the endeavor, both the band and their label ran into a few logistical problems with production (when all was said and done, the 7” Of The Month Club ran from February, 2005 to March 2006), but both also regarded the project as a success in the end; while the singles were not the lucrative idea they'd ever had, some people did come along for the ride and NOFX got to show people something unique.

Taken as a complete set (doing each individually would take a blessed eternity and, because the promotion was to showcase the making of an album, it makes sense to review it that way – right?), the process of how a band refines songs to prep them for an album becomes increasingly clear as parts on songs like “The Man I Killed,” “You Will Lose Faith,” “Getting High On The Down Low” and “Cool And Unusual Punishment” start a little loose (they'd be tighter on Wolves In Wolves Clothing) as well as the arrangements and dynamics changing – thereby putting the 'work in progress' vibe into relief. Fans will find themselves marveling at how the smallest change (like a slightly different guitar part – maybe) can totally change a song, and listeners will relish in the opportunity to decide for themselves which version of the songs they like better; which is just cool.

As cool as the development showcased on the 7” Of The Month Club series is though, it also becomes a little hilarious to find that some of the best songs – like “Arming The Proletariat With Potato Guns,” “There's No Fun In Fundamentalism,” “I Am Going To Hell For This One,” “Your Hubcaps Cost More Than My Car” and “I'm A Huge Fan Of Bad Religion” – all somehow fell out of contention while others made it through (six songs from the 7” Of The Month Club series ended up on Wolves In Wolves' Clothing). Those songs are great (so of course they've been bootlegged to kingdom come on the internet) and really make for something special to those that paid to subscribe to the club, leaving the rest of us all the poorer. Those who missed out on the 7” Of The Month Club can now only hope that, like the band did for the second half of 45 or 46 Songs That Weren't Good Enough To Go On Our Other Records and The Longest EP, NOFX will make them more widely available.


Never Trust a Hippie EP
(Fat Wreck Chords, 2006)
No matter how many bands trying and revive the shorter-form medium of the EP, it's astonishing how many bands just can't seem to get it right. At this point, the guiding principle behind the release of an EP seems to be, “Well, we've got these songs left over, what do we want to do with them? Make them the B-Sides for singles? Throw them on soundtracks? No! Let's release an EP!” The problem with that thinking is that the songs often have little or nothing to do with each other beyond the fact that they're leftovers; modern EPs almost never fit together, almost always sound slopped off or actually sound like the afterthought they are. Every rule needs an exception though, and NOFX has consistently proven itself to be one. In fact, the band’s EPs have always been where the band has shone brightest; in the shorter format, NOFX forgoes throwing everything it can at its audience in in favor of collecting and packaging a decent set of tunes that any fan would actually want to hear, and they actually promote something rather than trying to inject a previous release with new life.

That desire to use a pre-release as a promotion all tool is exemplified by the Never Trust A Hippie EP. As was the case with the Regaining Unconsciousness EP – which came out to promote The War On Errorism – Never Trust A Hippie includes a couple of the songs that would be on NOFX' then-forthcoming tenth full-length album, Wolves In Wolves' Clothing (“Seeing Double At The Triple Rock” and “The Marxist Brothers”), but includes some of the better tracks from the 7” Of The Month Club series as an added carrot; to date, “I Am Going To Hell For This One,” “You're Wrong” and a cover of The Germs' “Golden Boys” as well as an additional song called “Everything In Moderation (Especially Moderation)”; to date, this EP remains the only CD release of these songs.

The band is in their finest form on tunes including “I’m Going To Hell For This One,” “You’re Wrong” and “Seeing Double At The Triple Rock” – all of which are harshly judgmental and bitingly funny – and they totally erase the lines between church and state for satirical effect, enjoy some Gin-uine holy water and begin to stretch and include some new sounds, by turns.  At six tracks, the band succinctly makes its point and proves that, sometimes, ‘enough’ is as good as a feast.


Wolves In Wolves' Clothing
(Fat Wreck Chords, 2006)
With the release of Wolves In Wolves' Clothing, it's plain to hear that the band felt like it had missed something along its' career path. By then, the band had already been ripping happily at the fabric of American politics for years and been both revered and reviled specifically for the particularly biting and satirical albums released during the Bush administration but, particularly after the American public re-elected one of the most pitifully ill-equipped Presidents in American history, the band must have felt like a change was in order. Wolves In Wolves’ Clothing is definitely a change but, in many ways, it's also a return; this time, the songs are once again more sociologically interested than overtly political much like the band's early records were, but also reach out a bit musically to include other forms.

The shift is evident from the moment “60%” opens the record and, rather than hitting the ground at a full run, NOFX begins with a more intimate sound coupled by more dismissive lyrics. As an organ drones behind him, “Fat” Mike Burkett petulantly spits the words, “I don't care how bad I fuck up, I care about how fucked up I get/I'm not your clown, I'm your dealer and I'm holdin' three bindles of bullshit/and you're buyin' it cause you're addicted to the pure and totally uncut.”

Such a sentiment implies that “Fat” Mike feels like he tried, but didn't make anywhere near the impression he wanted to in their push to pummel American politics and affect change (that gets made pretty plain in lines like, “With our ass in the air and our heads in the ground/There's no sense of despair, without sight without any sound/We hold our ears and shut our eyes/Distant screams morphed into sweet lullabies” in “We March To The Beat Of Indifferent Drum”) , and so he and his band are just going to do what seems like fun. They hold to that too; in spite of the obviously sinister album title, Wolves In Wolves' Clothing remains pretty focused on the more secular pleasures of getting falling down drunk (“Seeing Double At The Triple Rock”) and high (“Getting High On The Down Low”) and perverse but entertaining human behavior (BDSM on “Cool and Unusual Punishment,” domestic terrorism and drug abuse in “Benny Got Blowed Up,” the quandary of doing right religiously and getting abused for your trouble in “You Will Lose Faith” and more) over any semblance of socio-political conscience. As a sociological study, in fact, Wolves In Wolves Clothing sets an interesting precedent and argument for WHY the good guys lost the election; with not a single “normal” or “well-adjusted” character appearing on the Wolves In Wolves' Clothing narrative plain, how could anyone have expected anything to go the way it was supposed to? NOFX seems to point that out every step of the way through this run-time without actually asking as much, and listeners find themselves siding with the band whether intentionally or not as a direct reaction to the group of perverse, abhorrent characters.

While all of that is going on lyrically, NOFX goes out of its' way to start stretching musically too, and incorporating a melange of sounds with their tight-but-not-quite-as-fast-as-it-has-been-previously punk rock; “The Man That I Killed” and “The Marxist Brothers” touch on rockabilly and reggae and room gets made for country, blues and even Tex-Mex balladry (on “The Man I Killed,” the title track and “Contado en Espanol” respectively) which makes for a set of unusual but welcome angles for the band to take. While the tempos do slow down to accommodate all the additional new sounds, the consistent difference on Wolves is the dialing back of distortion on the guitar parts of the songs which makes them feel less claustrophobic and gives Fat Mike’s vocals a little more room to breathe; exposing his satire clearly rather than glossing it over. Is it the single easiest thing for fans expecting more of the same high-speed punk rock to adjust to right away? Of course it isn't! This record is not at all the standard sort of fare that fans have come to expect from NOFX but it is an interesting listen for the open-minded. Here, with the band refusing to pander to any expectation their fans might have, NOFX openly refuses for the first time in years to be locked or pigeonholed into a single one-dimensional sound. Wolves In Wolves’ Clothing finally lets NOFX stand on their own to be judged on their own merits again as the improved writers and performers they've become.


“They've Actually Gotten Worse Live!”
(Fat Wreck Chords, 2007)
You have to love NOFX' unflinching, self-deprecating self-image. Calling an album “They've Actually Gotten Worse Live!” is a perfect example of that because the record really doesn't live down to that name; in fact, NOFX' sophomore live album is a hair stronger than their first. "They've Actually Gotten Worse Live!" is an excellent example of what you can expect at a current NOFX show: each of the songs is topical, tight, self-deprecating and fucking hilarious with stage dialogue that, even if you weren't there and are only listening to this CD, will make you laugh out loud – how many live albums can say that?

Culled from a three–night stand at Slim's in San Francisco, CA, “They've Actually Gotten Worse Live!” boasts a set list encompassing material from a fairly decent cross section of NOFX' albums and EPs (it's really cool to hear songs from both Fuck The Kids and Surfer appear, particularly surrounded as they are by some choice cuts from Pump Up The Valuum, So Long And Thanks For All The Shoes and The Longest Line, although that the album fades out during the encore performance of “The Decline” is pretty unfortunate), has nothing in common with the set of the first live album and never lets the energy level drop in spite of the tomfoolery, chicanery and obvious acts of drunkenness perpetrated by the band – in fact, all of those things actually help move it along, as do the slight changes to some of the snogs (Mike changes a bunch of lyrics to take cheap shots at the Bush family, and half breaks into Green Day's “Basket Case” at one point. While it doesn't sound like it should mean much, those little changes actually make the record feel special, somehow.

Will this shock any longtime fans? Of course not; anyone that's seen NOFX knows what to expect from a live album, but for the uninitiated, “They've Actually Gotten Worse Live!” ensures that ticket sales will increase after listening; it's just too much fun.


NoFX: Backstage Passport 2DVD
(Fat Wreck Chords, 2009)
Returning to the sort of “Behind The Scenes” spirit begun by the 7” Of The Month Club in 2005, NOFX went a step further by creating and then collecting a series of “Live And Inside The Tour of...” mini-documentaries chronicling the band's landmark 2006 world tour. By the, the stories of NOFX' hijinx on the road had been chronicled and spread by word of mouth and hearsay, but no concrete, current proof (read: nothing shot after the band was financially secure) really existed. The stories were great but some people just have to see it to believe it so, with a bit of tell-all included as well, NOFX shows people what they're missing on stage and how much fun the band does have offstage with NOFX: Backstage Passport.

...And it is fun. After introductions to all the key players (the bandmembers of course, the families they're leaving behind to hit the road, the band's road crew and Ken – the road manager) are are made, the footage jets straight to Rio De Janeiro where the tour of “all the places we want to go before we're too old” kicks off.

...And the going gets sloppy, right from the get-go. The band's road manager is already tanked before the band reaches its' hotel before the very first show of the tour and it doesn't get any smoother as the first show sees the band's first fight. The hits keep on coming when the second show of the tour gets canceled. Everyone is getting justifiably worried; the plan was to do a tour like the “old days” when nothing was a given so everything was exciting – but this wasn't exactly what they had in mind. They're far from home in places they've never been before, many of those places are notoriously unsafe and nothing's going right; the outlook becomes bleak and El Hefe's skepticism about one of the shows in South America starts to sound prophetic.

Everyone's thoroughly worried only a few dates in when the band's road crew is held hostage in a venue for a show that doesn't happen, but things finally start to go right in Chile; the crowd is nuts in all the ways that NOFX was hoping for – falling over the edge of the balcony on purpose to get on the floor and closer to the band – which suddenly gives hope to everyone.

After that, a pattern takes hold; while there are more travesties than there aren't on every stop of the tour, no one's spirits get irreparably damaged because the great moments that happen off-stage outweigh the trouble, and not every show is tragic. There are great moments and shows in Japan, Singapore and Malaysia that really transcend the confines of the DVD and, even when things do go badly (the counterfeit ticket concern in Beijing is a good example) everyone keeps having the time of their lives as they see and experience new things (like calling family members to tell them where they are while standing on top of the Great Wall Of China, or Fat Mike's acoustic show in front of a hotel for two hundred disappointed fans because the show scheduled the previous night had to be canceled) and have to marvel at their good fortune to be able to just BE there. That spirit an excitement is the enduring thing that gets the DVD over; whether a given show works or not ends up being irrelevant (good thing – because there's little chance that this tour didn't run at a spectacular loss) stacked against the fact that everybody's having a ball and laughing against the odds. That NOFX can laugh at it all is phenomenal and really illustrative of where the value in being in a band lies: it is the show, it is the audience, it is the music and it is the experience of it all that means something to the band, not dollar signs. That's what makes the footage captured on Backstage Passport great; a quarter of a century in, NOFX hasn't lost the joy that can be had from being in a band on tour.


Coaster
(Fat Wreck Chords, 2009)
For the last twenty-four years (give or take), NOFX has enjoyed a sort of extended adolescence because they've managed to keep a perfect balance of sophomoric lyrical content (jokes about the human body as well as its tolerance for consumption of drugs and alcohol and the comic results of testing those limits) and prescient social and political commentary that always sounds fresh and biting rather than repetitive. To date, it's been an easy road to run but, maybe because the bandmembers are now in their forties, Coaster marks a noticeable change in NOFX – it's the sort of reflection that most mid-to-late teenagers experience when they discover that all things are finite; including the amount of time that one has to get bombed and sketched out before it starts to sound mawkish and piteous.

That is not to say that NOFX spontaneously went gray in the three years between 2006's Wolves In Wolves' Clothing and Coaster, only that it's impossible to miss the change beginning to take shape within the band (but particularly in singer “Fat” Mike Burkett) in these twelve tracks. There are, of course, songs about getting hammered (“First Call,” “I AM An Alcoholic”) and those that will cause every mischievous would-be media terrorist to get a little tingle (“Best God In Show,” “Creeping Out Sara”) in their flagrant subversion, and they're on par with anything the band has done on Punk In Drublic or before – but those songs are tempered and balanced by moments of self-reflection more aged and genuinely personal than anything the band has done previously. While first person narratives are common on Coaster (“We Called It America” and “The Agony Of Victory” stand out), without a doubt the most revealing of these tracks – from a songwriting growth standpoint anyway – is “My Orphan Year.” In that song, Fat Mike confides his guilt regarding his parents' passing (it happened in 2006) and stands more emotionally bare in front of his audience and – while he's still backed by a far more dry-eyed and raging push by guitarists El Hefe and Eric Melvin, and drummer Erik Sandin than one would expect to support such candid sentiments. The song also represents the single greatest shift toward more personal songwriting that NOFX has ever attempted before and the promise that it represents is easily the most engaging part about it; finally, for the first time listeners are given a clearer glimpse at what, other than bravado, NOFX is made of and with it comes the implication that more developments and growth are in the works. While even the name of this album implies that it's disposable trash, the material contained on it marks the beginning of what might a new direction for the band – if Burkett doesn't decide to just chuck it, of course.


Cokie The Clown EP (CD or 2 x 7")
(Fat Wreck Chords)
It was apparent to anyone listening that, as they balanced some stock smart-assed songs with some more singer/songwriter-ly and personal fare on Coaster, a change was in the air for NOFX. No longer content to just play court jesters in the punk arena, “Fat” Mike Burkett, Eric Melvin, El Hefe and Erik Sandin were making a vested effort to grow up in songs like “My Orphan Year” and “I AM An Alcoholic.” They didn't go all the way or totally give themselves over to a chin-stroking and collegiate crowd of course, but there was an inkling that it might be where the band was headed in at least a couple of Coaster's dozen songs. The trend continues, in its own way, on the unlikely Cokie The Clown EP – these five songs still aren't straight-faced by any stretch of the imagination (NOFX probably never will be – given that their humor has been a key ingredient to their success for the last twenty-six years) but, from a psychological standpoint, the EP may be getting more personal and closer to Fat Mike than ever before.

Much of the material on Cokie The Clown is archetypal NOFX on the surface, there's no arguing that. The title track, “Straight Outta Massachusetts” and “Codependence Day” all wear that well-honed-with-time-and-us, snide and sarcastic sneer plastered like paint all over their faces and, in typical EP fashion, run a little leaner, a little quicker and a little sloppier but, not in typical EP fashion, there appears to be more weight to this material. Where's the weight? More regularly than usual for NOFX, Burkett seems to actually be singing about himself here; although there are moments when you have to read between the lines to find it. In “Straight Outta Massachusetts,” for example, the singer spends a significant amount of time double-talking himself and off-handedly talking about his upbringing (“I moved from Massachusetts cause I couldn't be controlled/ I moved from Massachusetts cause it was fucking cold... I moved from Massachusetts because my house got sold”) and it's only in the end of the song when it becomes apparent that this event happened at an early age (“I moved from Massachusetts when I was five years old”) and it's a sore spot for him.

Now, for most bands, this sort of song is novel and deservedly belongs on an EP but in the case of NOFX – who has spent a career talking shit about everyone and everything and made their audiences laugh the whole time – that sort of autobiographical admission sounds like a breakthrough. It's wilfully dumb and fluffy, but that almost seems like a device used to obscure some long-buried pain.

On the very next song (“Fermented And Flailing”), Burkett seems to be trying to take personal responsibility for the United States' splintering morale as the population continues to fragment away from any sort of unified national identity; that might be reaching a bit, but the sentiment is very much in keeping with the other four tracks on this release. “Codependence Day” sneers at drug and alcohol abuse, but there's some self-loathing laced into the singer's delivery and at least half of the song functions as a personal apology for the poor and dangerous behavior. Combined, the songs make for something profound with the right set of ears and, as the band reprises and re-contextualizes “My Orphan Year” (from Coaster), the acoustic treatment seems to magnify the heartfelt unease and regret at the singer's own conduct as well as the difficulty he has facing his family issues. It's dark and soul baring here, and the emotional state that was only hinted at in the Coaster version of the song is made plain as day here and it's staggeringly candid.

It's at that point that the opening title track of the EP begins to take on a whole new meaning. As the release's cover suggests, “Cokie” is Burkett in bad make-up; he is the clown, he is silly, he's a joke. That's the self-deprecating impression that surfaces and, while it doesn't sound exactly like NOFX, it makes sense if one takes the EP as a whole. Under that rationale, somehow Cokie The Clown feels like the most candid release NOFX has ever issued and the songs in no way suffer for it.

...Or, as the Cokie character implies himself, it might all just be a practical joke played here with malicious glee. It's equally possible that the five songs that comprise the Cokie The Clown EP are simply two-dimensional horseplay done for the sake of another release; that's the trouble with NOFX, one never knows and it's unlikely that Fat Mike will ever tell. Either way though, nothing can take away from the quality of the material; it's fun to run with and listen to. Listeners should be careful though, Cokie likes jokes and the ideas presented here may be genuine razors; they could be real.


The Longest EP
(Fat Wreck Chords, 2010)
By now, it must be common knowledge that NOFX is one of the best EP-producing bands in modern rock – if not the best. Since the band first came together in 1983, NOFX has kept up a long tradition of releasing EPs, and has seemed to relish specifically in the 7-inch vinyl format; in twenty-seven years, the band has released no less then thirteen EPs as well as a multitude of 7” singles. That dedication would be sort of cool in its' own right, but some of that output has proven to be keystone work to the band's development as well – every time NOFX has elected to alter its' sound, the band has seemed preface the full turn with an EP to let fans in on what's coming. That sort of telegraphed play was in place when NOFX introduced Aaron “El Hefe” Abeyta with The Longest Line EP, when the band kicked its' sound from 'fast' to 'hyper-speed' with So Long And Thanks For All The Shoes, it was prefaced with the Fuck The Kids EP and Regaining Unconsciousness marvelously foretold the political satire and commentary of The War On Errorism. While the sounds on each release have always been different, the result of such releases has always been the same: in addition to driving excitement up for the forthcoming long-player, the EPs give fans an inkling of what they can expect and how the band is changing. For those reasons, the announcement of a new NOFX EP has become a special event.

So how does one qualify a collection of those events into one, as happens on The Longest EP?

Collecting some of the best and most baiting moments from the Regaining Unconsciousness, Bottles To The Ground and 13 Stitches EPs together as well as some outtakes from the Fuck The Kids EP and the War On Errorism in addition to presenting the Cokie The Clown, Never Trust A Hippie and The P.M.R.C. Can Suck On This EPs in their entirety, The Longest EP does a fairly good job of illustrating the different directions that the band has taken between 1987 and 2009 and could almost be called the counterpart to Disc Two of 45 or 46 Songs That Weren't Good Enough To Go On Our Other Records (which collected the Surfer and Fuck The Kids EPs). That aspect of the release is handy, and it is a gratifying listen for fans who either don't own a turntable or haven't been able to delve too deeply into the back catalogue to check out these releases before, but The Longest EP also makes the utilitarian nature of its' release apparent by lacking a rhyme or reason to its' run-time. Longtime fans will question, for example, why the set opens with The Longest Line and runs in close to chronological order from there, but suddenly back-pedals in the end and closes with The P.M.R.C. Can Suck On This. That end will throw listeners off, leave them guessing in regards to what could possibly be coming next and really drives the idea of The Longest EP being a strictly utilitarian release.

That sort of utilitarian vibe combined with the news that, with the release of The Longest EP, all of the vinyl that the album collects will be going out of print makes it a little bittersweet. As previously stated, NOFX' EPs have become special events and, while the economy of The Longest EP is fantastic, to hear that the EPs are being replaced with this compilation will make some fans' hearts a little heavy, not because the songs sound any worse, but because the spinning black discs will be no more.

Further Reading:
This is Part Four for Ground Control's NOFX discography review. For Part One, click here , click here for Part Two and click here for Part Three.

Download:
NOFX - "The Quitter" - Coaster
NOFX - "Creeping Out Sarah" - Coaster
NOFX - "You're Wrong (Live)" - "They've Actually Gotten Worse Live!!"
NOFX - "Lori Meyers" - "They've Actually Gotten Worse Live!!"
NOFX - "Arming The Proletariat With Potato Guns" 7" Of The Month Club
NOFX - "There's No Fun In Fundamentalism" - 7" Of The Month Club
NOFX - "Your Hubcaps Cost More Than My Car" - 7" Of The Month Club
NOFX - "You're Wrong" - 7" Of The Month Club
NOFX - "I Am Going To Hell Of This One" - 7" Of The Month Club

Albums:
Most of NOFX' albums, singles, EPs and DVDs remain in print. Buy them here at Fat Wreck's website .