After the release and overwhelmingly positive reception of their First Four EPs set in late 2009, OFF! was left in a very peculiar position: they had successfully achieved their first goal quickly and incisively, so they needed to figure out what to do next. This, after all, was the band who famously formed to overcome stifling creative conditions (long story short, OFF! came together after singer Keith Morris' other band turned down the songs he and Dimitri Coats – who was supposed to produce the band's new record at the time – had written for them) and when the first product of that ambition was embraced by the public (as those aforementioned First Four EPs) OFF! had already succeeded.
The bandmembers had won – OFF! was a hit – so what next?
In order to keep from having to make some grand artistic statement which would almost certainly alienate fans (and would be contrary to everything about the band anyway), OFF! has elected to take a baby step with their new, self-titled album and, as so many hardcore hands did in the Eighties, treat it like their first big, standalone presentation; in effect, the First Four EPs hung out the shingle which read “Here we are!” but this new release refines that start, focuses it and screams, “…And this is what we can do!”
Right from the top of “Wiped Out,” OFF! explodes out with lean, aggressive passion as Coats' guitar springs off the solid wall of sound set up by bassist Steven McDonald and drummer Mario Rubalcaba, and pushes Morris right into the faces of listeners. Here, the hook is the absolutely unhinged vibe of the song and the fact that it comes out of nowhere; there is no warmup or waiting – Morris is already whipped to a froth and teetering on the brink of meltdown – and the caustic frenzy is fueled perfectly Coats' rhythm figure and infectious/incoherent guitar solo. It is the perfect one-minute-and-twelve-second salvo to open this new album.
…Actually, it's more than fans have ever received from OFF! before. The guitar solo marks the first ever included in an OFF! song (and that's sort of innovative in and of itself – if the band is supposed to be playing by the hardcore conventions set between 1976 and 1983), but it also suits perfectly. The incendiary energy that the band won fans with initially is not diminished by the new stimulus included in “Wiped Out” (guitar solo, a hair more melody in the vocal part) – if anything, it's even higher and really feels like the band has spontaneously arrived on a whole new level.
While not every song on OFF! overtly upends the conventions that the band laid down with the First Four EPs like “Wiped Out” does, there's no question that the band is fine-tuning and honing its form to razor's edge sharpness and making subtle alterations in each of these sixteen songs. In some cases, the band takes some of the subjects and sentiments that they presented as universal on the First Four EPs and makes them more personal which marks one pretty exciting creative turn but, even better, there are songs here which rely on genuine songwriting (which is a little closer to timeless) instead of just relying on reactionary ranting (which tends to have a pretty clear time-stamp) to blast a hole in listeners. On “I Got News For You,” for example, Keith Morris seems to summarily dismiss all of the older guard hardcore bands who are still working (it could be the Circle Jerks, but it could just as easily be Bad Religion, Epitaph Records or any number of others) with lines like “You think you're the king of a scene that you created?/ I got news for you!” delivered in a vocal tone that's all bile and vitriol while “Elimination” seems to line up and unload on the SoCal punk scene (veiled references to The Decline Of Western Civilization and the image of a dirty ditch running next to a golden trench helps to draw that conclusion). The results are awesome and incredibly potent, but a closer look at them reveals that they're not pointed or perfectly direct commentaries either; both of those songs – as well as “Jet Black Girls,” “Feelings Are Meant To Be Hurt,” “I Want One (I Need One)” and “Zero For Conduct” all draw fantastic images together, but also seem to take care to make sure they're open-ended and open enough to interpretation that listeners will be able to take them home and see connective lines with their own lives. That's the kind of thing that most bands really have to work to create normally, but it seems to come across from OFF! with perfect ease. This is better than anything those fans won by the First Four EPs could have hoped for; it's raucous and incendiary, but leaves enough of the field open that listeners will find it hard to wait to see what comes next from OFF!
Artist:
www.offofficial.com/
www.myspace.com/off
www.facebook.com/offband
www.twitter.com/#!/offofficial
Download:
OFF! – "Cracked" – OFF!
OFF! – "King Kong Brigade" – OFF!
OFF! – "Wiped Out" – OFF!
Tour:
For a regularly updated list of upcoming OFF! shows, click here .
Album:
OFF!'s self-titled album will be released via Vice Music on May 8, 2012. Pre-order it here on Amazon .
