What's good, gang?
I'm back in the saddle, comfortably in the world of wireless internet. Sad how fidgety I could get without it, but it makes things so much easier to have it. Another beautiful day out, went for a longer run when I got home from the office. Another great album from a mid 90s punk band came roaring through my ear buds and I thought 'Good lord, why don't I listen to Rancid more often?'
Rancid are a band that has always enjoyed a reputation of harder than the poppy fore-bearers of Green Day and The Offspring, but have never broken as widely as their counterparts, either. This is not to say Rancid wanted the audience. They just never got to the same level of selling out/buying in that these other bands did. Rancid, in fact, had great success and mainstream press with their seminal 1995 album ...And Out Come The Wolves. I love this album.
Released on Epitaph amid the mid 90s resurgence of commercially popular punk, Rancid's third album was an instant classic in the genre. There's a vibrancy and touch of life to ...And Out Come The Wolves that was lacking in other albums at the time; even now, fifteen years hence, the album is alive with warts and blistering guitar squeals and the vocal dissonance of Lars Fredriksen and Tim Armstrong. It's as though this album, with it's flaws and heart worn brazenly on it's sleeve, was a counterpart to the clean and mass-marketable appeal of Green Day's Dookie. Dookie was the Frampton Comes Alive! of my generation. This album is more like Black Sabbath's Paranoid - more dangerous, a little more left field, a little less calculated.
Look, for example, at the opening. Clocking in at a scant minute and twenty five seconds, 'Maxwell's Murder' is blistering and manic, from the staccato blast-beats to the strung-out bass solo that centers the track. Singles like 'Ruby Soho' and 'Roots & Radicals' were slightly more radio friendly, but still had the band's cracked vocals and loose, live-wire playing. The reggae/ska influenced 'Time Bomb' is as infectious and memorable today as it was when it was released. It's a song that makes you think you've already heard it before, like it's somehow based on another more famous song. The deeper cuts are fantastic, too. 'Journey to the End of the East Bay' is a magnificent exercise in the punk genre, showing what the band can do when given free range to be as anthemic as they please.
Sure, Rancid has released plenty of solid, quality punk albums over their massive and prolific career. None of them hold a candle to Wolves in my eyes, however. This album is so amazing, end to end. The passion never ebbs, the vibrancy never waivers. If you've never heard it, you've missed a huge part of where modern punk, post-punk and hardcore all get their moves from. Listen to it, you'll be astounded at how real and relevant it feels, all these years later.
I'm back in the saddle, comfortably in the world of wireless internet. Sad how fidgety I could get without it, but it makes things so much easier to have it. Another beautiful day out, went for a longer run when I got home from the office. Another great album from a mid 90s punk band came roaring through my ear buds and I thought 'Good lord, why don't I listen to Rancid more often?'
Rancid are a band that has always enjoyed a reputation of harder than the poppy fore-bearers of Green Day and The Offspring, but have never broken as widely as their counterparts, either. This is not to say Rancid wanted the audience. They just never got to the same level of selling out/buying in that these other bands did. Rancid, in fact, had great success and mainstream press with their seminal 1995 album ...And Out Come The Wolves. I love this album.
