Lars

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the To Victory EP by Lars Frederiksen. After a career spent tirelessly writing, recording and performing music with a celebrated list of bands on an incredible number of releases (to date, that list includes no fewer than forty-five releases recorded with bands including Rancid, Stomper 98, Old Firm Casuals, The transplants, The Bastards and Oxley’s Midnight Runners), it seems genuinely surprising that, only thirty-eight years after he started, Lars Frederiksen has added...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Oi – 40 Years Untamed compilation from Pirates Press Records. I confess that, when I first heard the punk subgenre known simply as Oi!, it was pretty far from my favorite thing. At the time, the music just didn’t seem to be too interesting to me – and it didn’t help that a couple of my friends insisted on playing Dropkick Murphys’ “Barroom Hero” constantly – often dedicating it to another...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Holger Danske LP by The Old Firm Casuals. After a solid amount of time up on blocks (the band’s debut album was released in 2014 and, while there have been a couple of splits and a couple of EPs, demands for something more substantial have gone unanswered), a recent reissue campaign renewed interest in The Old Firm Casuals (a.k.a. Singer/guitarist Lars Frederiksen’s “other” band, beyond Rancid) and so they’ve answered that...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 12” picture-disc reissue of Old Firm Casuals’ self-titled debut EP. By the time Lars Frederiksen unveiled Old Firm Casuals in 2010, the singer/guitarist was already very well exposed in the punk rock community. He had already cut his teeth with U.K. Subs in 1991, gained pop (and pop-punk) stardom with Rancid beginning in 1993 and “gone solo” with The Bastards in addition to taking a seat in the producer’s chair at...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the new Hellcat Records/Pirates Press reissue of the Viking LP by Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards. If the idea that a classic album is defined as one which holds personal meaning for a listener can be taken as factual, then I can say confidently that Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards’ sophomore album, Viking, is one of the most important albums of my life; for me, it is a personal classic. I remember,...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Hellcat Records/Pirates Press reissue of Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards’ self-titled debut album. Those who remember that time period when all the Southern California punk bands who broke through in the early Nineties got huge (like the Offspring, Green Day, NOFX and Rancid) remember what a big deal it was when Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards released their first album in 2001. Granted, they were not the first offshoot group to...

Artist: Metallica Album: Hardwired… To Self-Destruct (Deluxe Edition 3CD) Label: Blackened/ADA/Warner Music It’s funny how the psychology of salesmanship works – after a certain point, one has to wonder where the logic goes. A great example of that can be found in the Deluxe Edition, 3CD version of Hardwired… To Self-Destruct. As previously stated in my review of the standard-issue 2CD version of the release, Metallica’s new album is a great trip back to the early, shreddy and fairly lean...