Jukebox
Patrick McEachnie
OFF! OFF!
For a band that admits to not listening to new music, it becomes very easy to rot away in a bar playing dated material that no one really cares about anymore. Thankfully that’s not what’s happened to the guys in OFF! While I try my best to avoid calling them a “supergroup,” the four members have been playing punk successfully longer than the majority of us have been alive. Thirty-four years ago Keith Morris co-founded a band named Panic, later to be changed to Black Flag. Black Flag changed the nature of punk rock and music as a whole (attention Nirvana fans: pick up “In My Head” by Black Flag), but the Morris-fronted Black Flag imploded soon after.
Now, thirty-four years later, we have OFF!; a band who takes no influence from punk rock post 1983, in what could be considered a sort of PSA to the current generation. Call them delusional, call them over the hill, hell, you might even call it a comeback. The point is, the four parts contributing to OFF! have produced more influential records than most record labels. Now that I’ve got the “supergroup” notion out of the way, I can talk about the important part: the music.
OFF!’s first release, The 1st EP! is available only on 7” vinyl, and not unlike early Black Flag, Red Kross, and Rocket From The Crypt material, is jaw-droppingly efficient. Playing four songs in less than four minutes, the jarring nature of these songs is relentless. While this EP makes an amazing debut for listeners familiar with the names of their resume, it is definitely not an introductory step to the genre as a whole. Even though these sounds were fodder for dropping out of school and ammunition for angry parents in 1979, the climate of the music world in 2010 is vastly different. The mainstream media is rather accustomed to the more violent tendencies of underground music, largely thanks to Nirvana for bridging the gap (see my note in the intro). This mainstream adoption is written all over OFF!, as before releasing their debut they were interviewed, featured, and boasted by the likes of NBC, Spinner, and pretty much every medium in between.
While this sort of promotion would have killed a band (or at least their fans would have) in the late 70s, when OFF! does it, it’s nothing short of refreshing. To see Carson Daly describe a hardcore punk rock band as being “just ridiculous,” and then host them and 300 of their fans on his show is something the world just hasn’t seen yet, and until OFF!, we really weren’t ready for it. Considering they blast through an entire EP in the time most charted bands finish their opening song, they really are setting an example. OFF! are doing something drastically different than anyone has done successfully in decades, yet have the integrity to do it devoid of influence from The Warped Tour.
It’s understandable that OFF! may not be accessible to everyone. After all, only small portions of people still listen to records, and even fewer deem it worthwhile to play an EP for only four minutes of music. The band has three more EPs due out by December, all of which will be collected in a deluxe box-set dubbed The First Four EPs to be released on Nov. 23. Sure to stay on my turntable for weeks at a time, OFF! is my pick for best new band of 2010.
Reviewer rating: 5/5
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