Now Playing: 'Ground Control's NOFX discography mix Part 3'

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After a certain amount of time, it's important to shake things up a bit in any job, if only to make them interesting again. Realistically, who doesn't want to change it up in their work and discover new possibilities? Most everyone does, and NOFX did too; by the turn of the millennium, the band had been working with Epitaph Records for over a decade and, in that working relationship, had managed to push their exposure incredibly high. The name 'NOFX' was well-established by then and several of the band's gambles (like The Decline) had worked out, so why not one more? It was at that point that “Fat” Mike Burkett expressed an interest in bringing the band back to Fat Wreck for all releases, not just EPs and singles. “I told the band that I wanted to go to Fat Wreck Chords and the other guys weren't sure why,” remembers Burkett of the time around the decision to switch again. “We had a good deal with Epitaph and I said 'I'll give you the exact same deal that Epitaph does but the difference is that I'll be making three dollars a record instead of Brett making three dollars a record. That seemed good enough for them which was really cool of them; they appreciated the songs I've written and their reasoning was that I'm a better bro than Brett is, so why not have me get the money? At the time, we weren't doing any press and shit like that, so who cared, right? There was no real difference – the distribution is the same and the difference in sales between War On Errorism and Pump Up The Valuum was pretty negligible so switching labels didn't make any difference in that regard; sales didn't go down or anything.”

After the release of Pump Up The Valuum, the decision was set. The band would head back to Fat Wreck full-time and that was cool, but what NOFX would discover was that the move would open up a host of other possibilities; the band would enter a whole new learning curve for marketing their ideas and they would discover the joy that could be had from having no one in a position to tell them 'no' so things were indeed about to get interesting for NOFX again.

This is Part Three of Ground Control's NOFX discography review. For Part One, click here , click here for Part Two and click here for Part Four.


Pump Up The Valuum
(Epitaph, 2000)
After The Decline unloaded some high concept, highly intelligent commentary and criticism on fans, the perception of NOFX shifted a bit – again. Suddenly, the band was getting looked at like there might be more to them than both fans and critics had previously assumed, but the final impression left was very split; some listeners and members of the punk community were pretty put off by the EP (this was, of course, years before Green Day made it okay to have a conceptual idea with American Idiot) because they were still rigidly clinging to the idea that punk rock songs were supposed to be short and simple with elementary themes or, at least (to quote Johnny Ramone), they should be “long songs played quickly” with elementary themes – not eighteen-minute song cycles. While NOFX was by no stretch of the imagination pandering to anyone when they released Pump Up The Valuum and they did shift back into individual pop-punk formatted songs, they didn't exactly move backwards.

On Pump Up The Valuum [the name was deliberately misspelled to avoid possible litigation by Hoffmann-La Roche for copyright infringement of the name 'Valium' – something which The Melvins faced when they released Lysol in 1992 –ed], NOFX get back to playing along speedy skate punk/melodic hardcore lines (only the album's closer, “Theme From A NOFX Album,” breaches the three-minute mark) but none of the songs backslide or dumb down to re-obtain the lowest intellectual common denominator in the pit; Fat Mike's lyrics are as strong as his wit is sharp here, and the singer makes no attempt to hide or bury that under a blanket of double entendres.

From the very opening of the tongue-in-cheek-ily entitled “And Now For Something Completely Similar,” NOFX picks up where the tempos of So Long And Thanks For All The Shoes left off as far as the band putting the pedal on the floor and aping some of the same dismissive ennui  as the band has shown before (the opening line, “Hello – welcome to our disc/turn it up, get your neighbors pissed/or turn it down – it don't matter to me” says it all doesn't it?) and falls easily into “Take Two Placebos And Call Me Lame” which totally hides the fact that NOFX' lyrical style is growing (fewer of the lines are rhymed couplets, if you notice, but they never fall off meter and the band doesn't throw any device in to make it wildly apparent that little of what's going on here is particularly joyous; going almost unheard in the mix are likes like “I'm sick of being used, time and again betrayed” and “Can't you see my soul, on the record sleeve?/It's going up for sale, as soon as it gets saved” – and those that do pick up on them have to wonder what's going on here.

At roughly the same moment “What's The Matter With Parents Today?” rolls out with the snide question, “Mom and Dad, how'd you get so rad/when exactly did you get so hip?,” what's on NOFX' mind becomes clear: the band suddenly noticed that some of their fans grew up when they weren't looking. It was bound to happen; when punk rock broke (again) in 1994, NOFX had already been making records for nine years. Now do the math on that:


That's the beauty of demographics, and it's also the realization that must have spurred likes like, “They're singing every word/You're not supposed to like my band/Things I like you don't understand.” The fact that an increasing number of punk rockers were getting older really threw the band because the idea was totally contrary to the idea of youthful rebellion and every time thoughts turn that way on Pump up The Valuum, the going gets ever-so-slightly awkward. Happily though, it doesn't turn that way very often and, even when it does (like on “Thank God It's Monday” and the mainstream music industry kiss-off “Dinosaurs Will Die”), the sentiments get progressively funnier and more biting instead of more petty or needlessly acerbic.

That angle also isn't the only one that the album takes; “Louise” reappears for the first time since 1999's Louise And Liza single, NOFX parodies Bad Religion (sort of) on “Stranger Than Fishin'” and the band does eventually slow from its' breakneck pace for the methodically off-putting and crass “My Vagina.” The obvious argument for the virtues of the latter could be that, again, it's commentary on the nature of the transgender community and speaks out to include them, but listen closer – lines like, “My vagina's got lots of extra skin/took an outtie and made it an in” derail any possibility of being a call of some sort of solidarity because it's just too comical and obtusely blunt. It is also a good laugh though and, as long as listeners take it that way, they can safely say that it fits right in with the dominating theme of Pump Up The Valuum: to crack off-color jokes and get listeners to laugh at a few hot-button subjects. After “Herojuana” fluffs its' way through and gets mildly confusing at the song's message (it's never exactly clear if NOFX is for or against the prohibition of herb), the band collapses with one final laugh in “Theme From A NOFX Album” before packing it in.

In the end, Pump Up The Valuum proves itself to be a really good and solid punk rock record, but it isn't at all the average NOFX record. On every NOFX album since Liberal Animation, the band has shown a couple of different sides and sounds – flecks of ska, rock and R&B silliness (like “New Boobs,” for example) and even alt-rock have been known to manifest – but Pump Up The Valuum is a concentrated and unflinching punk rock record; there is no deviation from that.

That single-minded approach begs the question, “Why?”

The best explanation is that, because of the way the album plays out, it feels like NOFX might be trying to prove something. Maybe it's that, because the punk playing field had become so crowded with other bands (by the turn of the century, there was an unprecedented number), NOFX was staking a measure by which new bands could be judged. If one chooses to look at it that way, one could call Pump Up The Valuum NOFX' midlife crisis – or their punk rock workshop, if you like. Regardless, this album still yields some material that stands head and shoulders above that of the band's new competition, and also stands as a benchmark record for the band in its' own right.


Bottles To The Ground EP
(Epitaph, 2000)
Peel an onion, and you'll find a lot of layers.” So goes the line which has been uttered to try and allegorically explain how many ways a person or object might operate. Really, it has been said so often now that it has basically lost all meaning – but there are occasions when the chestnut holds up and makes sense. When you look closely at it, NOFX' Pump Up The Valuum is such an occasion; on the surface, PUTV is just another in a string of really good records made by the band which began about a decade prior and, while there are moments when the band would come off as a little two-dimensional and earnest in their focus on only the melodic hardcore and skate punk sides of their sound, the hits more than made up for the lack of genre-bending and so the overall impression of the record is generally positive. That's all well and good, but when a couple of the songs removed from that context and get some additional light shone on them as “Bottles To The Ground” and “Dinosaurs Will Die” do for the Bottles To The Ground EP, they betray a very different side of singer Mike Burkett's songwriting.

Opening with “Bottles To The Ground,” the EP starts off strongly with hose chunky chords and a singalong chorus that every kid in the pit knows by rote but because the song doesn't have two-thirds of an album that built up to it like it did on Pump Up The Valuum, it's forced to really stand on its' own here which leaves it wide open for analysis.

As it turns out, “Bottles To The Ground” isn't “just” a punk rock anthem, it's also a break-up song that addresses the demons of excess. Sure – every punk knows the “one more round, then it's bottles to the ground” chorus, but dig into verses and lines line:


While the words are vague in their overall direction, they are poignant and imply that the singer/guy at the bar has had his relationship end on him while he was out at the bar, boozing and brawling, but no impression is left that the protagonist cares (if he even knows), and all that matters is what's happening at the bottom of his glass – or who's face it'll be going into. Putting that angle on the song makes Fat Mike's monologue sound just that much more bitter and damning and, while none of it changes the direction of the song, it suddenly makes “Bottles To The Ground” feel like a moral treatise – even if it chooses to lead by negative example.

The same negativity holds out into “Dinosaurs Will Die” as Burkett both chronicles and mocks what he sees as the first death knell for the mainstream music business (“I feel just terrible about it/That's sarcasm, let it burn”) but, on this EP, the singer is able to go one step further on the previously unreleased track “Lower,” give a more personal take no the same subject and explain why he's happy to not race with the other rats:


In some ways, “Lower” could be seen as a sort of continuation of “Here Comes The Neighborhood,” but with a few years of hard lessons and experience behind it that has strengthened and tempered the band's resolve and, when the singer begins to talk knowingly about falling off an idolator's pedestal in the song's close, it seems to foreshadow the crumbling that actually is happening in the music business now, so many years after this EP's release. “Lower” was reportedly left off of Pump Up The Valuum in favor of including “Total Bummer” on the record which is unfortunate; while the bass plays a more active role in “Lower” and the guitars are more muted in the mix which would have made “Lower” stick out like a sore thumb on PUTV, it is of greater quality than “Total Bummer” and would have made a better album cut. The same could be said of “My Name Is Bud” (the other “previously unreleased" song on the EP) which, while it is short, reasonably fluffy and otherwise the epitome of melodic hardcore, sort of drowns a bit here on a four-track EP in spite of not being a bad song (it would also appear later on the 7” Of The Month Club series of releases).

Taking all four tracks together, listeners are left with a very ominous feeling about the Bottles To The Ground EP. As previously stated, the album cuts from Pump Up The Valuum become more interesting than static here; on the Bottles To The Ground EP, the dogs truly do get to have their day.


Surfer EP
(Fat Wreck Chords, 2001)
By 2001, NOFX was set and they knew it. The band had not just established itself as a presence on albums and tours, they had outlasted many of the other bands in their peer group and reached that magic point of comfort and satisfaction; NOFX' tours were a guaranteed sell by 2001 (due in part to the band's three appearances on Warped tour between 1995 and 2001, as well as their approach to booking their own tours; NOFX has never allowed itself to become a fixture in any market and never over-plays any, thereby making every date in any given tour an event), albums were selling consistently well and life was getting better in general for the bandmembers. In addition to all of that, the band had been recently released from Epitaph and had elected to begin self-releasing all of its' own records again on Fat Wreck Chords for the first time in twelve years – so why not celebrate a little? All of those stimuli seem to manifest a bit in the Surfer EP (the cover and title are both parodies of Bad Religion's Suffer album – although likely not a shot at Epitaph) as, sounding like it may have been cut live and in one take on the recording studio floor (which would have meant it took about eleven and a half minutes to make), NoFX cuts loose, has some fun and doesn't bother to cover any mistakes that they might make.

The air of Surfer is incredibly light as NoFX seems to “bring it on home” at the beginning of “Fun Things To Fuck (When You're A Winner)” grabs a listener's attention and doesn't let it go. It sounds stupid to say it, but “Fuck Things To Fuck” might just be the single greatest song in NOFX' catalogue that would never have a hope in hell of getting played on the radio. With liberal use of the abbreviated form of the word “firetruck” (or Sammy Hagar's favorite acronym – if you like), NOFX goes out of its' way to gleefully piss in everyone's cornflakes (“Fuck the front door, fuck the back/Fuck the good girls with the knack/Fuck the government until they fuck you back/fuck a Muslim, fuck a Jew/Fuck fans of Blink 182/That's illegal if you were born in '83” ... “Fuck a midget, fuck a dwarf/Fuck Chris Cringle with an elf/But before you fuck it all...go fuck yourself!”) and, because the song still doesn't sound at all tossed off, it causes listeners *even the ones who don't approve) to laugh and sing along in spite of themselves. Toward the end, “Fun Things To Fun” does start to get a little blurry and leaves no discernible gap between itself and the beginning of “Juicehead” in the run-time but, as odd as it might sound, that simple omission really sets a tone for the EP; it's funny, it's fast and it's surprisingly formidable. With all that in place, the band just keeps running through “III On Speed,” “New Happy Birthday Song?” and “Party Enema” and laughing all the way as they avoid even sort-of serious or personal subject matter and just play hard and fast like The Descendents, but with a slightly higher premium placed on novelties and nonsense. Surfer just a fun record for its' own sake and it works fine that way; after so much time spent being an “important punk band, to hear NOFX just cut loose and goof off is very relieving and rewarding. Not every song is genius – Melvin's lead vocal turn on “I Gotta Pee” is senseless and funny in context – but those tracks where things stay light (which is pretty much all of them) and just shoot for grins like “Whoa On The Whoas,” “Totally Fucked,” “New Happy Birthday Song?” and “Party Enema” all get over on the raw and natural hook of just being good without the band putting any effort in at all.

All that said and it's likely that Surfer would have a very divisive effect on listeners. Some (like me) will rank the EP very highly because, unlike virtually every other punk band with the same amount of exposure and tenure on the scene (like Green Day and Rancid), Surfer proves NOFX isn't too grown up to have fun. Some fans would condemn NOFX for that, and claim that the EP is a total waste of time, but that group of critics needs to lighten up; Surfer is and plays incredibly well to that end.


45 or 46 Songs That Weren't Good Enough To Go On Our Other Records
(Fat Wreck Chords, 2002)
As Mike Burkett himself confesses in the explanation of 45 Or 46 Songs That Weren't Good Enough To Go On Our Other Records that appears in its' liner notes, after a band has been together for a while and has made some records, a stockpile of small, lesser known and/or under-released songs begins to eventually build up. Why? Maybe the vibes in those dispossessed tunes just didn't fit with the albums on which they were intended to appear, maybe a particular song just wasn't coming together in a way that the band was happy with, or maybe it really just wasn't all that good. Normally, such songs become the stuff that rounds out a Japanese single or EP (there was a time when artifacts like that were hard to come by and a hot commodity among fans – before online bootlegging became a very real way of life and forced the bottom out of that market, but NOFX decided that it wanted a piece of that action so this two-disc compilation was conceived. A quick survey of the track list will reveal to readers that there are a number of songs from different sources here, and some of them originally appeared on releases that are covered by this dialogue – but then there are a few which aren't included. That's because time and availability have a habit of narrowing catalogues and, now, 45 or 46 Songs... is the only place to find them anymore and, while this review has aimed to be as complete as possible, some things have simply proven to be impossible (or at least financially unjustifiable) to procure. For that reason, 45 or 46 Songs... is a very important part of NOFX' catalogue; it's still in print, not overly expensive and relatively easy to find.

The two-CD set is worth finding too – while the second disc included handily collects both the  Fuck The Kids and Surfer EPs which is great for the sake of convenience (CDs remain more easily portable and are impervious to damage when compared with vinyl) and are worth checking out in their own right (they're both really good EPs), Disc One of this set pulls together a really varied collection of both unreleased and “small release” (those myriad singles, compilation tracks and so on) material into one economical compilation.

The cost-saving and convenience that the set represents is admirable and there are some really good songs to be discovered on Disc One as well as some 'must-hear' rarities but, as is the case with any compilation of its' type, there are also some dogs on Disc One. On the first disc, for example, it's cool to hear the title track that got cut from Pump Up The Valuum because it's likely the most dramatic song ever recorded by NOFX as Fat Mike and Eric Melvin split vocal duties for the whole song and both do reasonably well even if they sound a little uncomfortable throughout, while “The Plan,” “Zyclone B. Bathouse,” “Bath Of Least Resistance,” “Lower” and “Pimps And Hookers” are all able-or-better B-Side songs. Each of those aforementioned could cut it as album tracks on any of the records for which they were originally intended, they just fell out of consideration because there were better songs that NOFX was more interested in seeing on an LP. That's understandable enough but, by the same token, there are the tracks which appear here because they have exactly no right to be anywhere else. In listening to the poorer songs on this comp, it quickly becomes apparent that what makes or breaks a NoFX song every day of the week is whether or not it's too novel for its' own good. As a case in point, the reasoning for why songs like “All Of Me” (which could pass for a 'Way Off Broadway' show-tune), “Lazy (...it certainly is), the sort of New Wave-y “Pods And Gods,” “Timmy The Turtle” (which illustrates why Fat Mike should leave singing with a put-on British accent  to Billie Joe Armstrong) and “We Ain't S**t” (well, the song certainly isn't) is self-explanatory as each causes eyes to roll involuntarily with the preponderance of novelties included. While NOFX proves here that, yes, they can pull off these sonic departures, it doesn't mean they should.

Now, anyone reading along could probably complain that this review of  45 or 46 Songs That Weren't Good Enough To Go On Our Other Records sounds muddled and indecisive on the set's value, and it is – how could what amounts to a collection of dispossessed odds and ends not be? It can be said that most of this comp is better than it isn't (the second disc with Surfer and Fuck The Kids on it alone ensures that – and there are some good songs on disc one too), it's just an awful lot to wade through at once. Reading it might sound like a bit of a cop-out, but 45 or 46 Songs... is a lot of work for what you get in the end – and it's fairly superfluous if you already have separate copies of the Surfer and Fuck The Kids EPs.


Regaining Unconsciousness EP
(Fat Wreck Chords, 2003)
When NOFX returned to regular album-recording duty in 2003, they must have felt like strangers in a very strange land for a variety of reasons. While the band had been cutting loose from Epitaph in their time away, and spent the better part of two years getting their affairs arranged the way they wanted, times had changed and the band had remained largely silent from a 'brand new material' standpoint – not that they had much choice, they were just busy with other things. In 2000, Pump Up The Valuum came out and, per custom, that required tour support (NOFX did Warped Tour in both 2000 and 2002, as well as a couple of other tours in between to that end) and the band also released 45 or 46 Songs That Weren't Good Enough To Go On Our Other Records to tide fans over in 2002 but, even so, fans were amazed that the band wasn't more active – particularly after the events of September 11, 2001. That period was a time of a phenomenal amount of egregious activity which would have been a perfect target at which NOFX could take aim, but it didn't.

Fans might not have been aware of it, but NOFX was taking notes and watching closely as governmental affairs both foreign and domestic were being grotesquely mishandled while the state of punk rock was simultaneously growing more rudderless and glutted with glorified metal bands calling themselves 'hardcore.'

Finally, in 2003, NOFX' disgust at all of the events happening in the world and in punk rock reached critical mass and the first tip of the band's hand was the Regaining Unconsciousness EP – a quick taste of their response to the Grand National Lunacy happening in the U.S. including George W. Bush's hijinx as well as the decline of a music form which once claimed to be anti-establishment, but was now allowing military recruiters to cruise the grounds and try to enlist people at their annual convention (a.k.a. Warped Tour) and had lost a lot of its' musical values. Each of the songs on the Regaining Unconsciousness EP has something in common, and it is this: the entire band sounds fed up as the guitars seem to scream that much louder in the mixes and Fat Mike seems to spit or clip (or both) every phrase cleanly – as if he is truly reading listeners (as well as the subjects of the songs) the riot act.

First comes comes a dissertation/dissection of the state of punk rock with the tellingly entitled “Medio-core.” With uncharacteristically mid-tempo, slightly dub-by (at least during the verses) guitar vibe, Fat Mike takes care to enunciate and clip phrases like “Sing – sing a song/make it simple/so all the kids can sing along” before ripping into everything and everyone in a tirade during the bridge (“You condescending fucks/Make me wanna laugh and puke at the same time./I'm one to speak/this song sounds like fifteen you've heard before/Medio-core”) that rings with disarming truth when you consider the likes of Fallout Boy, My Chemical Romance and Good Charlotte, all of whom were ascending the charts and many of whom were dominating the stages at Warped Tour at the time. Prior to this point in their history, NOFX has never been given to sounding morally superior (not deliberately, anyway) in their songs, but they do here – and it is deserved. Even now, “Medio-core” remains a fantastic reality check for punk rock and the blanching of it perpetrated by a host of bands that came along late  enough and were arrogant enough to think they had a clue, but remain sorely mistaken. In that same vein but with a slightly different center (more punk than ska, and more 'society' than 'community' in focus), NOFX takes aim at the world's human population at large with “The Idiots Are Taking Over” and really sinks in some good jabs. With some point-punctuating screams from Eric Melvin, Burkett leads with a joke (“It's not the right time to be sober/now the idiots are taking over”) before really laying into everyone – “the stupid people that are breeding,” the world which just seems to keep “getting dumber” and more – before dismissing it all (“Darwin's rolling over in his coffin/the fittest are surviving much less often”) and likening it to Planet Of The Apes.

With punk and the world at large squared away and dealt with, the final album track included on Regaining Unconsciousness which is scheduled to appear on the band's forthcoming full-length narrows focus again and puts just the United States in the cross-hairs. It's certainly a dicey subject to tackle – especially with all the flag waving being done and all the concentrated national pride on so many American lips at the time – but NOFX manages to shrink wrap EVERYTHING (Michael Moore, Fast Food Nation, Noam Chomsky, the argument between the U.S. and France that ultimately coined the term 'freedom fries,' armed “peacekeeping” initiatives in the Middle East – and that's just the tip of the iceberg) into one neat, succinct and memorable  two-and-a-half-minute punk song. When you really think about it, “Franco Un-American” could be seen as punk's long-overdue response to Billy Joel's “We Didn't Start The Fire” as far as the band going out of its' way to neatly sew every current event in recent history at the time and presenting it such that it all appears to be one big interconnected ball of shit. Also like “We Didn't Start The Fire,” NOFX does include  some novelty in the form of garish, slightly clipping synths but, happily, it does avoid sounding dated by lacing in a few timeless problems (like the decline of the environment) and presenting it all with a bit of comic gloss, too. Because of that, the song still plays pretty well even years after the dust and dissatisfaction have settled, as does “Hardcore 84” – even if the nostalgia inherent to that song does mark it as the black sheep in the herd.

More than most of NOFX' other EPs (which tend to function as autonomous entities), Regaining Unconsciousness really seeks to be a teaser for the forthcoming full-length and generates some excitement because it implies that, when it does hit, The War On Errorism will be the punk record that fans have been praying for from NOFX and will finally offer some intelligent critical commentary on the panicked and pitiful state of the world. It's a tall order but, if NoFX is setting itself up this way, fans know the members won't welch.


The War On Errorism
(Fat Wreck Chords, 2003)
Not that NOFX has ever wilfully backpedalled or chosen not to follow through on a great idea (check out all of the band's EPs from The Longest Line forward for proof), but even the band's celebrated history didn't offer a lot of clues to what listeners could expect of The War On Errorism – the perfect expansion of the ideas first hinted at on the Regaining Unconsciousness EP. For the band's ninth studio album, the members hold nothing back – not one instinct, not one opinion, they never pull a punch and never second guess or apologize for a viewpoint – they simply go for broke on fourteen slabs of scathing social, political and musical criticism and commentary clearly geared to shake young punks out of what the band perceives as a debilitating state of ennui and complacency. “Fat” Mike Burkett, El Hefe, Eric Melvin and Erik Sandin are absolutely merciless as they hit the ground running with the scathing indictment or modern punk, emboldened by “The Separation Of Church And Skate” and, instead of taking one swing and then laying back to gauge how audiences take it, NoFX just keeps swinging and almost always connects hard with each subject.

As far as the political songs on The War On Errorism go, each is second to none in NoFX' songbook. In songs like “The Irrationality Of Rationality,” “Franco Un-american,” “American Errorist” and “Re-gaining Unconsciousness,” NoFX cleanly and precisely their characters and issues of choice (misplaced national pride on “Franco,” governmental con artists, spin doctors and fear mongers in “American Errorist,” and a close examination of the process of flawed belief in “Re-gaining Unconsciousness”) and strips all the extraneous bullshit away to let the core bullshit stand bare. In that context, each presentation is wildly funny because each points out that the ideas behind them are intrinsically flawed, but also made classic by the fact that the band is playing incredibly smart, even while working in a populist form (that is, pop) form who is pulling it off – it's beautiful.

Likewise, the shots called out against the blanched new breed of “punks” are equally stirling here. NOFX wisely avoids regularly promoting their own abilities (there is no “we're better than you” talk) overtly on songs like “Medio-core,” “Anarchy Camp,” “The Separation Of Church And Skate” and “Idiots Are Taking Over,” and simply implies the characters or ideas of different acts without using names which allows a listener's imagination fill in the specifics to suit their taste. It's a really smart way of working here, because it lends an accessibility and extends the life of the songs; there will always be bands that fans of the scene feel are lacking and so those names can be filled in later because, while the songs aren't at all vague, they are left open enough that they can be manipulated and adapted to include the next joke of the moment, every moment.

Of course, there are more songs than just those that are critical of the politics of the day and the punk of the moment on War On Errorism and most are not what one would would call sub-standard or throwaway (well, “Mattersville” might qualify as forgettable) and, in fact, they serve more as the personal color that helps the more overtly critical songs get over; true, “The Separation Of Church And Skate,” “Medio-core” and “Idiots Are Taking Over” are good on their own, but they do even better with the contrast provided by songs like “Whoops, I OD'd,” “She's Nubs” and “We Got Two Jealous Against” which all aim and achieve a lighter air. The difference between the topical material and the pop songs balances the record beautifully and elevates the record to a whole other level for NOFX. The War On Errorism is a classic album because it successfully captures listeners and provides them with a vivid image of the moment at which the record was made, but it still manages to sound pertinent now.

Further Reading:
This is Part Three of Ground Control's NoFX discography review. For Part One, click here , click here for Part Two and click here for Part Four.

Download:
NOFX – “The Idiots Are Taking Over” – Regaining Unconsciousness EP
NOFX – “The Irrationality Of Rationality” – The War On Errorism
NOFX – “Electricity” – 45 or 46 Songs That Weren't Good Enough To Go On Our Other Records

Albums:
Most of NOFX' albums, singles, EPs and DVDs remain in print. Buy them here at Fat Wreck's website .