Alexisonfire’s official website exists at the URL theonlybandever.com. Pretty bold claim, if you ask me. But then I started looking into it. Weirdly, I can’t find any evidence of any other band ever existing anywhere in the world. Seriously, not one. So this is officially the first and last discography ranking we will ever post on The Hard Times. Enjoy.
5. Old Crows/Young Cardinals (2009)
I can’t stand when bands churn out the same album repeatedly, but I also hate when bands change their sound in any way. I dislike Old Crows/Young Cardinals for both reasons. OC/YC finds Alexisonfire retreading similar ground explored on “Crisis” but with more of an alt-rock influence than ever before. It’s not a favorite of mine. I’m not a lyrics guy so maybe this album’s words are amazing and they mean a lot to you, but Zeus gave me a brain that doesn’t understand lyrics after even 200 listens so… sorry. This could be a concept album about comparing various Cheez-It flavors and it wouldn’t affect my enjoyment in the slightest. (White Cheddar is the best.)
Play It Again: “Burial”
Skip It: “Midnight Regulations”
Honorable Mention: Dog’s Blood EP (2010)
This EP finds Alexisonfire rediscovering some youthful recklessness after the relatively restrained and mature “Old Crows/Young Cardinals.” You’ll find 4 pretty solid songs here with a lot of long guitar solos and instrumental passages. Possibly too many. Also, this EP may have had a hand in popularizing that colorful, cartoon-y art style that dominated post-hardcore and metalcore for the next half-decade. Minus five points.
Play It Again: “Black as Jet”
Skip It: “Grey”
4. Otherness (2022)
My main gripe with “Otherness” is tempo. Most of the songs here are mid-tempo rockers. That’s fine sometimes, but I listen to Alexisonfire for energy and thrills. I understand that bands mature, get older, and chill out. But if anyone could buck the trend, I’d hope it would be AOF. We already have City and Colour for when we need to put on reasonable music in a carpool. If you’re going to listen to “Otherness,” pull it up on YouTube and listen at 1.25x speed. Bands love it when you do this to their music.
Play It Again: “Reverse the Curse”
Skip It: “Sans Soleil”
3. Watch Out! (2004)
Choosing the top 3 here is very difficult. When I first volunteered to rank Alexisonfire’s catalog, I planned on ranking “Watch Out!” at the top spot. And while it’s still my personal favorite on most days, I have to admit upon relisten that it isn’t the strongest album in their repertoire. It starts off magnificently with “Accidents” but the middle third lags behind the rest in the songwriting department. The stretch from “Hey It’s Your Funeral Mama” to “White Devil” just isn’t quite as memorable as the rest. I’m happy to report that the band sticks the landing with an amazing one-two punch to close out the whole shebang. The cymbal that starts off “Get Fighted” makes me want to walk down my street smashing side windows off parked cars. In a good way.
Play It Again: “Get Fighted”
Skip It: “That Girl Possessed”
2. Crisis (2006)
This album is great. Phenomenal, even. Almost… too perfect. Is that a valid criticism? That it’s too good? It’s almost so clinically exact in its execution of Alexisonfire’s sound that I don’t reach for it as much as their “amateurish” debut. Whatever, you should have known by this point in the article that I have no idea what the fuck I’m talking about. Damnit, if I weren’t severely hungover and depressed that I finished my rewatch of “Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place” last night, I’d change the ordering and bring “Watch Out!’ into second place. But nah. It stays here.
Play It Again: “Mailbox Arson”
Skip It: “You Burn First”
1. Self-Titled (2003)
This is one of those debut albums that seems to get mentioned by its creators with a sense of embarrassment. I couldn’t tell you why. It has everything I want in music: chunky rhythm guitars, memorable melodies, creative lead guitar parts, a great balance of screaming and singing, youthful abandon, and a production style that actually sounds like a bunch of people playing music together. It also came out in a time in my life when I still had hope, which is nice to remember. Anyways, this is a Canadian classic and a grand opening statement from the only band ever.
Play It Again: “.44 Caliber Love Letter”
Skip It: If you’re even half as cynical as me, you might want to skip the spoken word section of “A Dagger Through the Heart of St. Angeles.” Otherwise, it’s a good throwback when bands thought spoken word sections were a good idea.
1. Have at Least One Member of the Band Ready To Receive the Heimlich
2. Go 100% On Hair, 0% On Makeup
3. Never Let Anybody See the Tip of Michael Anthony’s Left Elbow
4. Counteract Impending Baldness With an Abundance of Hair Elsewhere
5. Alex Stands In Back.
The “Mad About You” theme song is one of the worst examples of white guy jazz there is. And nobody has ever moshed to white guy jazz. 
All horns and strings in this theme song. But somehow it’s even worse than ska, at least you can skank to ska. There is no skanking to this theme, not even close. 
The “Law and Order” theme kind of goes hard, but it never gets you over the hump. Ideally, you are compelled to mosh by sheer force of will, not because you’ve been standing around for an hour and your knees hurt. 
For an album with such a bold title, there’s not much going on here. It bounces around in a lot of directions, but none of them are very interesting. It’s one of those albums that seems like it was made just to trip up Name That Tune players, because few of these tracks will stick in your brain. They should’ve called it “Punk Goes Elevator Music.”
“Does This Look Infected?” was an intentional attempt to grow beyond the pop-punk sound that the band established in their breakout debut album. The result is a record stuck in an eternal, awkward adolescence, like it’s got a wispy little mustache on the cover. Sure, it’s “more mature” than their previous work, but when your last record’s hit single had a line about laughing at old people falling over, does that really mean anything?
If you need evidence that these guys are more than just Canadian Blink-182, look no further than this album: they’re also Canadian Greenday, circa “American Idiot.” Sum 41 has never been afraid to be a little derivative — sometimes to their benefit — but it doesn’t quite work out for them here. The production feels a little low rent at times, like the tracks were just normalized in Audacity. Still, one of the songs almost got frontman Deryck Whibley deported because some Republicans thought he was threatening to kill Bush, which is pretty fuckin’ cool.
You can’t really discuss Sum 41 without mentioning this EP. I probably got a dozen computer viruses trying to track it down on Kazaa. It was a pretty prescient glimpse of the band’s future, being a mainly punk work with a couple of metal songs tossed in for good measure. Fun fact: since the total playtime comes in at 26 minutes and 27 seconds, the title of the record is the most accurate accounting of time in punk history.
It’s a small tragedy that the moment Sum 41 had largely evaporated from the public consciousness, they started releasing some excellent albums. It took them a decade and a half, but these boys figured out how to fuse pop-punk and metal, and it freakin’ rips. The return of guitarist Dave Baksh certainly helps — the solos might not quite melt your face, but they’ll for sure soften it up a bit.
If I told you Sum 41 wrote an album about how divisive politics are these days, you’d probably roll your eyes and do a jerk-off motion. But it actually works! Okay, maybe not as genuine commentary, but it’s a crystallized, laser-focused distillation of everything the band has been trying to do. It’s driving and intense, but still catchy. Plus, have you seen how divisive politics are these days?
“All Killer No Filler” may have been the biggest thing to happen in 2001. Well, top three, anyway. It was impossible to escape this album. I’m pretty sure every single track was featured in a movie or TV show at some point. It’s the kind of album that could convince a 34-year-old comedy writer that he could still learn how to skateboard, despite the fact that he’s never done so much as an ollie. It is pure magic.
After dragging themselves through the crucible that was “Does This Look Infected?” Sum 41 emerged on the other side ready to craft their masterwork. Part of me sometimes wonders if my affection for this album is just a vain attempt to gain cred on long-defunct online music forums, but my concerns fall away immediately whenever I listen to it. It’s varied without feeling directionless, intense without becoming grating. Exactly like everyone on the old message boards said.
When it comes to queercore, these guys are the daddies so to speak. I don’t mean that in the fetish sense, more they were one of the first and best queer punk bands out there. Though, given their advanced age, I suppose they technically fall into the daddy category.
Fronted by LGBTQ icon Beth Ditto, these Arkansas punks met at Evergreen State College and were a part of the Kill Rock Stars lineup. Their sound is perfect for the more dance-oriented queer clubs. You could theoretically open a pit on the dance floor but best to read the room before trying.
Frontman Seth Bogart frequently performs in nothing but a leather jacket and a leopard print thong. Hunx takes the late 70s snotty sound of Richard Hell and The Dead Boys and adds more than a touch of John Waters-style camp and ’60s girl group hooks. Though you’d be forgiven if you spent the whole time just staring at his beautiful ass.
As we do not do bi-erasure here, we’re including the iconic ‘90s punks fronted by openly bisexual Billie Joe Armstrong. “Coming Clean” is an introspective track about one’s sexuality. Also, let’s not forget that ode to gender benders “King for a Day.” So now that you know Armstrong is bi, that one line in “Basket Case” kind of makes more sense, yeah? Way to be heteronormative.
I guess this is a bit of a stretch as they didn’t sing about queer topics, though their lyrics had that sort of detached shade that only gay men are capable of. I guess that’s why Joe Genarro wrote such great lyrics. It was kind of nice to learn that the frontman of one of the best ’80s bands is a fellow butt boy.
Before St. Vincent, Portlandia, and even Sleater-Kinney, punk legend Carrie Brownstein played in this early riot grrrl outfit out of Portland that also was rooted in the queercore scene. So I guess they were a twofer? Anyway, listen to this album anytime you hear a more recent Sleater-Kinney record and are wondering what went wrong. This or any of Sleater-Kinney first eight albums.
Grant Hart and Bob Mould are bisexual and gay icons. But more than that, they made some of the best guitar music of the ’80s. Mould and Hart later clashed over creative control and drugs, which, if you’ve ever been out on a Saturday night in Bushwick or West Hollywood, you’d know is pretty gay. If your favorite bear night has been overrun by twinks, consider seeing a Bob Mould show.
Taking their cues from early queer punk legends Randy Turner and Gary Floyd, they brought a queer sensibility to the otherwise macho hardcore scene. So keep that in mind before queuing them up on the jukebox, the bartender will likely skip them for killing the place’s “vibe.”
Coming out of the Olympia, WA scene, these riot grrls were brash, loud, and unapologetic in singing their truth. Play “One More Hour” a track written about Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein’s romantic relationship coming to an end and try not to feel heartbroken as well.
Fronted by all-around badass Laura Jane Grace, Against Me! May possibly be Florida’s only positive contribution to contemporary music. Transgender Dysphoria Blues is a modern punk classic dealing with Grace’s gender transition. Play them as a nice fuck you to any Daily Wire spewing aunts you have to deal with.