NOFX

Editor's Review:

Our old friends, NOFX are back with their umpteenth album, So Long and Thanks For All the Shoes. If you're expecting the same hammering, riotous banging away we've come to love in NOFX, that's exactly what you're going to get. Fat Mike, Eric Melvin, El Hefe, and Paul Atics are here giving their loving fans our needed fix of the sound we so crave.

Kicking off with "It's My Job To Keep Punk Rock Elite," the boys get right down to business with the usual pounding guitar riffs and angrily comical lyrics: "Apparently, I've alienated some/ It seems my job's half done." While the majority of the songs on this album portray traditional punk, the band has picked up on ska in a fairly large dosage. Such is the case in 180 degrees, which is more of the old sound, with undeniably ska-like bass lines. All Outta Angst is about as ska as it gets, surprisingly exuding from the beloved defiant punks, which can only help the point of the tune; "I got no one to blame, nothing to change/ I got no evil to fight/ One thing's for sure, I'm all outta angst/ Society don't bother me/ And there's nothing wrong with that." The trumpet featured in these ska rip-offs is also featured in many other songs on the CD.

The songs on So Long... closely resemble reported crack highs, extremely high bursts of vehement energy in an extremely short time span, most of the tunes add up to about 2 minutes in length. Changing from their usual theme of merely social commentary, NOFX touches on a little political vein with "Murder the Government," a theme which is self-explanatory, and "Kill Rockstars," which, unbeknownst to anyone who just read the title, is a response to male-bashing feminism: "You can't change the world by hating men." And the last tune on the album, "Falling in Love," will bring a whole new meaning to the phrase. The song is based on an enamored couple going down in a plummeting airplane.

So whether you're an old NOFX vet, or even if you haven't experienced their sound before, So Long and Thanks For All the Shoes is definitely worth your while.

--Jennifer Elton
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Record Label Epitaph Released March 1998

Tracks It's My Job To Keep Punk Rock Elite Kids Of The K-Hole Murder The Government Monosyllabic Girl 180 Degrees All His Suits Are Torn All Outta Angst I'm Telling Tim Champs Elysees Dad's Bad News Kill Rock Stars Eat The Meek The Desperation's Gone Flossing A Dead Horse Quart In Session Falling In Love

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