OFF! - OFF!

  by Daniel Cressey

published: 26 / 6 / 2012

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Review

OFF! contains a pretty awesome swathe of punk royalty and has thrown together a tight, furious, and pummelling 16-song, sub-16-minute first album. But even the lineage former Black Flag singer Keith Morris and his similarly veteran colleagues bring cannot quite form their clear dedication to the cause into something truly worthy of their talents and heritage. With most of these songs clocking in at under a minute the band go for it from the off, all screeching guitars and not-in-the-slightest-suppressed rage. At the speed OFF! smash through this album, every song’s assault is over almost before you have time to realise where the band are heading, let alone catch them up. Sometimes it works. ‘Borrow and Bomb’ is proper, political punk at its short-sharp best. And ‘King Kong Brigade’ is among the best outpourings of anger recorded in years, building from a surprisingly slow intro through a rant about people taught to shoot before they can read to reach the line “I want to club you like a baby seal/Staple your scalp to my steering wheel”. But when the anger gives way to bitterness – such as the railing against someone who thinks they are “king of the scene” on ‘I Got News For You’ – things do not fare so well. OFF! are intoxicating when railing outwards, but markedly less so when straying into score settling.

Track Listing:-

1 Wiped Out
2 I Got News For You
3 Elimination
4 Cracked
5 Wrong
6 Borrow And Bomb
7 Toxic Box
8 Man From Nowhere
9 Jet Black Girls
10 King Kong Brigade
11 Harbor Freeway Blues
12 Feelings Are Meant To Be Hurt
13 Vaporized
14 503
15 Zero For Conduct
16 I Need One (I Want One)

Band Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/offband/
http://offofficial.com/
https://twitter.com/offofficial
https://www.youtube.com/user/offoffici
https://plus.google.com/10546118948922

Label Links:-

http://www.vicerecords.com/
https://www.facebook.com/VICE/
https://twitter.com/VICE
http://vicemag.tumblr.com/