OFF! - Self Titled LP - Vice


7.6/10

 Keith Morris is 56 years old. That's pretty old to front a blistering hardcore punk band such as OFF! But thankfully, he's just as pissed off and full of anxiety as he was when he recorded Black Flag's "Nervous Breakdown" extended play. After leaving Black Flag in 1979 due to the pressure of the band's workload and his own "freak-out" from drug use, Morris formed the Circle Jerks. The band went on to release the very influential "Group Sex" in 1980, an album which they never matched. After their eventual hiatus, Morris has popped up every now and then playing shows with the Jerks and providing vocals for other recordings, but not until 2009 was he as active as this. An old, crotchety beast has been awakened.

 OFF! is made up of former members of notable bands, but alluding to the four-piece as a "hardcore super-group" seems a bit silly. This is a straight-forward, eighties style driving hardcore band. Their first official LP holds sixteen tracks and doesn't even match in minutes. Sure, the genre of hardcore punk has changed a lot since Morris was at the forefront, but it doesn't seem as if he - or any of the members of OFF! - really give a shit.

While sitting outside with a close friend of mine just last week who is a huge hardcore fan and talking about OFF!, he was quoted as saying that the band was "hardcore for old dudes and punks who don't really listen to hardcore anymore." Part of me can understand where he's coming from, because what's hip in hardcore today doesn't sound like this band. It sounds like the bands who play Chaos is Tejas every year. It's noisier, and a lot more out there than a band that sounds like a natural progression of the eighties scene. But for some reason, this works.

 Maybe it's the energy of Morris, and the fact that this may be the first time where he's working with a band full of really talented people rather than a revolving door of arrogant musicians or young fuck-ups. And maybe it's that as he grows older, he becomes more focused. It could also be that with age, the man becomes more and more jaded about the world and the scene, which drives his lyrical power in an angrier direction. Whatever is going on with this band, it's turning out well.

 While this full-length doesn't have some of the flat-out bangers from the earlier extended plays (which were eventually released in a collection, also by Vice records) such as "Panic Attack", and "Jeffery Lee Pierce". It still starts off every track with a massive blow and ends with a giant fuck you to whoever is listening. It's angry, and a perfect record to listen to when you're walking the city streets just looking to take out whatever aggression you might have. It's back to basics, but not perfect. Skateboard to it.