Does your favorite band have blood on its hands? Did they put out an album or even just a song that perfectly summarized a genre so well that any follow-ups would be an insult to taste and reason alike? Was it talent or a complete lack of it that catapulted their sound into annoying ubiquity? Some bands are so good that they own their own genre and sublet the space to other bands until the city deems it uninhabitable and bulldozes it for a Dress Barn. Other bands ruin their genre by spawning endless imitators, each one more obnoxious than the last. Did they do it on purpose? Did they hold a burning contempt for humanity so fierce it’s reserved for motherless demons that service each other only when a child goes missing? Regardless, these bands ruined their genre not all too different from how my mom said I ruined the genre of sons.
Ska: The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Thanks to these guys, music has a ‘year zero.’ There’s ‘pre-having a guy in the band that just dances’ and ‘post-having a guy in the band that just dances.’ A ‘bosstone,’ if you will. The original has a name and it’s Ben Carr and by all accounts he is a very sweet man. Let’s face it, other bands have hypemen – Flavor Flav (short for Flavid) and Avail’s Beau Beau, but the matching suits were the smoking gun. They created the expectation that every ska band needs a guy who just dances and I find that mildly inconvenient. What can I say, it’s the impression that I get.
Indie Rock: The Strokes
Depending on which Wikipedia article you scan before you lose service on the F train, rock ‘n’ roll experienced a golden age for 50-160 years where a band having a name starting with ‘The’ wouldn’t garner a second look from even the toughest music critics. Enter The Strokes. Fueled by good looks, industry connections, ample resources, and some darn fine hooks, The Strokes made it significantly more difficult to start a band. Suddenly, having your band name start with arguably the most common word in the English language drew instant comparisons. For shame, The Strokes. Where does it end? Did you hear my friend Jessica’s band: The Year of Living Dangerouslies? Of course not. Lost in the industry shuffle and not because they never released any albums, played any shows, or were actually the name of a trivia team in 2006.
Nu-Metal: Limp Bizkit
Did the red-behatted Sir Frederick Durst and his band of not-so-merry stuff breakers ruin the genre (in between bouts of breaking stuff, obviously)? Looking back, it was pretty ruined to begin with, but you can’t deny it was fun. Birthing countless copies, LB took a newish metal and made it the nu-metal we know today. They also had a wacky guy in the band who wore spooky outfits and contact lenses. Did nu-metal reintroduce their own version of the ‘bosstone?’ Perhaps, but what they introduced full-stop was a soundtrack for Monster-swilling suburban doinks to wail on meeker doinks and perfect their handheld bottle rocket trajectories. I like their cover of George Michael’s ”Faith” and one time I had the best time in an Amsterdam coffee shop watching all the videos back to back with another guy named Mike C.
Emo: Paramore
The Hard Times Editor-in-Chief Bill Conway suggested this one. And rightfully so, this band basically sold audiences a pop-punk shoe that was too big and loaded it with a padded emo in-soles that prevented blisters and shin splints. Did Paramore ruin emo? Who’s to say? Answer: me! But more accurately Bill. And, yes, after Paramore it became legally mandated for people to discuss any new music artist by opening with “Do they sound like Paramore?”
Oi!: Hard Skin
What started out as a tongue-in-cheek comment on the naturally anthemic streetpunk genre favored by skinheads, football hooligans, and people who follow every sentence with “innit?” HS turned out to be better than most oi! bands doing it sincerely. Insult to injury, HS included alumni from politically minded punk bands Thatcher on Acid and Wat Tyler which were antithetical to the entire scene. Also, my band Family Fun opened for HS, and while staying completely in character Fat Bob, Nipper, and Johnny Takeaway said we sounded like pure unadulterated ‘shite.’ Hilarious, guys!
Parody: “Weird Al” Yankovic
Homie ruined the genre for everyone else (except maybe Hard Skin because I’m pretty vague on the definition of ‘parody’). You can’t take an existing song and rewrite the lyrics without someone asking if you’re trying to be Weird Al. And you know what? He fucking earned it. Hell, he pretty much owns songs about food, so good luck trying to write a country song about rice pudding or a polka about Jolly Ranchers. He ruined all your parody, food, polka, novelty careers with an accordion and a legion of refreshingly unfashionable fans.
Weimar Anarcho-Punk Cabaret Death Klezmer (WAPCDK): World/Inferno Friendship Society
Band leader Jack Terricloth passed away two years ago but not without creating a frothing waltzing fanbase that destroyed venues while wearing suits for 25 years before he departed this earthly plane. It’s incredible that so many WAPCDK bands would start in WIFS’s wake, but maybe that’s because it’s so easy to dress like a time-traveling anemic private detective trying to catch and kill Peter Lorre. #ripcloth
Swing: Cherry Poppin’ Daddies
The ‘90s were a dumber time with kids all over the world buying zoot suits and pocket watches with their paper route monies. The ‘90s were so all-in with this band that they let them play the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards… even though they were called Cherry Poppin’ Daddies. Why not have the Sack Fondling Uncles play your son’s first communion? Their biggest hit was “Zoot Suit Riot” which was also an account of a horrific racially motivated riot in the 1940s which was totally “not money.”
Industrial: Nine Inch Nails
This band wrote the playbook on the genre and made it so every performance had to look like a combination of “The Crow” and Burning Man: leather in the desert, goggles in a basement. Did NIN invent industrial? Heavens to Betsy no!! But musical architect and future Golden Globe Winner Trent Reznor made it impossible to exclude the word ‘industrial’ when discussing bands influenced by his own. But hey, at least it paved the way for Ministry’s Al Jourgensen to win a Kids Choice Award for “Dark Side of the Spoon.” What is going on with those awards?! “Hey Kids, get ready for a slutty new ode to sex from Orgy!”
Grunge: Nirvana
It seemed like Kurt knew it too. Personally, I always preferred Candlebox.
Everything: The Beatles
Those silly b-boys as they were first known made the people want to dance, which made the people forget the majesty of the Lord, and there is no sin greater. The Beatles ruined the genre of life. Our minds were a temple and their charismatic melodies welcomed in the merchants and money lenders. What followed was years of untold depravity and even our children’s children will not be safe. However, I think we can all agree ‘Octopus’s Garden’ is a stone-cold groove, bay-bays!
As this is Coheed’s first full-length album, ranking at the bottom of their discography is to be expected—it’s just a warm-up for the next two decades of increasingly creative and nuanced work that will develop the story of The Armory Wars. All the songs pretty much melt together in an unremarkable sonic landscape not unlike many other post-hardcore bands of the early 2000s, if other post-hardcore bands were singing about pretend galaxies. The fact that no song title is longer than four words is evidence enough of just how far this debut is from the super unique and technically impressive nerd-metal that would emerge in the following years.
This is the band’s fifth album, but as the first chapter of The Amory Wars arc, it feels like somewhat of a regression not just in plot, but musically as well. To be fair, it’s about bots and revenge—topics that have a ceiling on their listenability. It’s pretty safe to say most of the population isn’t able to have a personal relationship with these themes. Although I did have an uncle who claimed to travel to the future to fight mega-bots. The family doesn’t talk with him much anymore. Anyway, there is some great heavy metal-leaning guitar work across all tracks, but it lacks any real standouts or hits.
It’s fair to say that this is the album in which Coheed really came into their sound. Although, the original release did include eleven tracks of complete silence, a creative choice so insane that fans were reassured this band could never sell out even if they wanted to. A number of audible songs take place on a ship steered by the narrative of a vendetta, so that’s something. But it’s the singable singles that really carry this record, which is otherwise just okay musically.
Coming in at only nine songs and a run time of forty minutes, by Coheed standards this is basically an EP. It’s the first half of the double album prequel-to-the-prequel of The Amory Wars, which follows the saga’s namesake character on a big old existential quest. Many of the tracks have an industrial rock feel to them, with a few electronic beeps and boops thrown in for good measure. It’s a solid album, if not super memorable.
Okay, with this being the only album in Coheed’s full-length discography that’s about, like, normal life, it’s an obvious outlier. It has a rightful place in the band’s timeline, but something about Sanchez’s fantastical writing style when applied to topics of the mundane world comes off as a bit saccharine. There’s a layer of pop-punk to many of the tracks that could appeal to a certain crowd, but at times seems to dull the uniqueness that’s always at the core of Coheed’s sound. However, it does have moments of sincerity that are beautiful enough to remind fans it’s okay to step beyond The Keywork every now and then.
This second half of “The Afterman” hits more deeply than the first—musically it has a wider emotional range, big guitar riffs, and nice melodicism throughout all tracks. It also lays a trumpet track on one song without sounding the least bit ska, marching band, or symphonic—no easy feat, if you ask us.
Oh, you “like their old stuff better?” Well, we like their old stuff and their new stuff, because Coheed’s most recent effort is a venture into new musical territory that serves as an exciting premise for what will come with the remaining three Vaxis albums. There’s an early-80s arena rock feel to this record, with its explosive guitar parts and synthesizer elements. While many of the lyrics draw inspiration from the hellscape of the pandemic, true to Coheed form, the songs still suspend the listener in a place between reality and zealously detailed fantasy. We might even dare to call this album danceable.
Written and recorded at a tumultuous point in the band’s career, this album is nevertheless an extremely satisfying sequel to their previous release and a triumphant conclusion to the main The Amory Wars tetralogy—a word we would never need to know, if not for Coheed and now I use it daily whether I need to or not. It evokes the spirit of early heavy metal, and with the energy running high from beginning to end, not one track feels contrived or out of place. Plus, let us not forget that the late Taylor Hawkins recorded all the drums on this release—a baffling fact that is almost definitely proof of a parallel universe.
As the first installment of the five-part Vaxis saga, this album was much anticipated by Coheed’s fandom. And with fifteen bona fide anthems about two new characters attempting to flee imprisonment at the hands of an antagonistic interstellar empire, it exceeded all r/TheFence expectations. The opening bars of “The Dark Sentencer” are nothing if not a signal to listeners to buckle up, because it’s about to get real Coheed-y. Released twenty years after the band’s beginnings, Vaxis – Act I is a testament to what can happen when you pair passion for weird, niche, hard rock music with consistency and time: it gets weirder, stays niche, and rocks harder than ever before.
While Coheed has continued to make several highly enjoyable, deeply interesting albums in the eighteen years since the release of Good Apollo…Vol. 1, it stands as their defining and most essential effort. Yes, it’s their most commercially successful record to date, but that’s probably because it’s about kidnapping and murder and poison, and people love true crime. Moreover, Coheed has never sounded more like Coheed than they do in these songs. As the “hero’s journey” album of The Amory Wars arc, it’s literally and figuratively epic, and overall just exciting to listen to. There’s a reason “Welcome Home” and “The Suffering” are still Coheed’s chosen live encore nearly two decades later; this record rocks in all twelve sectors of Heaven’s Fence, and here on Earth.
This album may seem to be as far from NOFX’s sound today as it ever could. Long before Fat Mike dabbled with being vegetarian, long before NOFX had enjoyed any radio play, they were, by definition, 100% an ‘80s hardcore band. Like most ‘80s hardcore it has its time and place for older white dudes on their way to the podiatrist because they’ve only worn Vans and Doc Martens for three decades. The most coherent messages here are vegetarians are dumb, beer is good.
The second half of what was supposed to be a double album, and clearly the red-headed stepchild of the two is neither of the kids were wanted. If this is going to be the last studio album from NOFX it will be a stain on the legacy in the same way a freshly 21-year-old person gets a novelty bar shot with a chaser that is nasty and then follows it with a mat shot. It contains another song addressing an attempt at sobriety, and it hits harder than most of the other songs about Fat Mike trying to get sober because anyone who has gone to detox knows that those first few days feel like cake and then it crashes down about as hard as this album.
The first half of what was supposed to be the aforementioned double album. “Fuck Euphemism” is one of the strongest tracks for these releases, taking place at the Eagle, a legendary LGBTQ+ bar in San Francisco that hosts punk shows, and all 17 punks left in San Francisco who haven’t been priced out appreciate the nod. “Grieve Soto” is a masterclass in writing a song about losing a friend, but also a stern reminder of Exene of X and Penelope of the Avengers dropping hard Rs in their songs. The album contains one of the most self-referential songs to exist in the entire NOFX catalog, “Linewleum,” poking fun at the popularity of “Linoleum,” the countless covers of the song, Le Tigre, and like all great NOFX songs, pee drinking. The few standouts do not save the rest of the album.
Establishing that gatekeeping is a 24/7 job, and a necessary evil is an unpopular and hard thing to do, but who can be mad when it’s this catchy? This album is one of the least surprising, run-of-the-mill NOFX albums, but it’s still got everything a person could want. It has some catchy songs, some goofy puns, some fast songs with funny ska parts. If Fat Mike is your preacher, then this album is the sacrament bread you eat. You eat it not because it’s good on its own, but because of the community around it and the joy it brings you.
The vinyl version is called “Frisbee.” These two names may be the most honest album names to ever exist. Depending on which version of the album you got, there were some alternative tracks and takes on songs. It’s like Pokemon Blue and Pokemon Red, you’ll need to buy both to catch them all. The covers are branded as being a coaster/frisbee with “Music Included” and The Hard Times has independently verified that the respective releases perform perfectly well.
It may be hard to discern an overarching theme that ties “Wolves in Wolves’ Clothing” into a cohesive album, but it’s hard to say that the Mistress Bar in Roppongi isn’t on your must do in Tokyo list now. This album is all over the place, but not necessarily in a bad or overwhelming way, more like in a getting drunk and riding random bus lines and happening to just roll through into cool neighborhoods. Anti-Religious themes, politics, and poking fun at other bands are present, checking every single NOFX checkbox for an album. Apparently, there are multiple references to beef with Propagandhi on this album, which is rich especially when you consider Propagandhi is on Fat Wreck. Hopefully, everyone got to laugh it all the way to the bank!
What’s better than an album with timeless art that depicts a man fingering a sheep in front of a barn? There is also an alternative cover art depicting the same man with his pants down in a 69 position with a sheep. Is it the same sheep? Don’t sheep mate for life? Did this man have to fight a ram for the right to sexually indulge in the sheep? If this album isn’t a fan favorite, it fuckin’ should be. It’s equal parts adolescent humor, part addressing coming of age, while being vindictive to multiple groups of people, all while missing out on any other animal fucking puns outside of the title. Perhaps the animal fucking is an allusion to the image that Fat Mike presents in “The Black And White” when the image of Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin fucking each other is presented in song. Not content at only attacking cartoon-level scholars, the album goes after dead heads, a plague across San Francisco, and mocks the death of Jerry Garcia singing about what a great day his death was, even though Fat Mike got the date wrong. Fingers crossed we see hippies exterminated from San Francisco in the next decade or so, if you hate them, NOFX is here to let you know, you’re not alone.
Originally titled “White Trash, Two Kikes and a Spic,” the cover for this album reveals that Fat Mike is hardly fat, and in fact, he’s not even the fattest person in the band!. Arguably, this may be the first album where NOFX really begins to feel like NOFX and approaches the more poppy sound they’re known for. Most importantly this album taught many young punk men everything they decided they needed to know about lesbian relationships via “Liza and Louise.” Every fisting begins with a first kiss, the cardinal rule. Despite the name, the album hardly touches the subject of race in any way, possibly this is for the best.
This album is perfect if you need a community college version of Bad Religion. Instead of the commentary on humanity and American culture that Bad Religion effortlessly weaves into their music, NOFX does this by complaining about people who live in LA and how bathing once every 24 hours is too much. There are some catchy, vaguely political songs, and not for nothing, you won’t need a dictionary to understand the lyrics. Aside from how anyone feels about the album, it also has art you will never forget.
The last release on Epitaph, and you should play it loud. A valium drip is a great thing, if you’ve ever had one, you know this album was doomed to never be as good as the namesake. Any 14-year-old would love this album with timeless hits like “My Vagina,” “Dinosaurs Will Die,” and “What’s The Matter With Parents Today?” like seriously, it mentions vaginas in multiple songs. By this point in time, Fat Mike was probably rolling in the dough and still riding the high from “Punk In Drublic,” among some other substances probably. “Thank God it’s Monday” at face value of the song title may suggest it’s pro-rise and grind, but it’s really just about not having to work because you have sold a million copies of your biggest record. Must be nice!
This album is seen as a return to form after the prior effort, “Coaster” (or “Frisbee” if you purchased the 12”). Fat Mike takes on a handful of geo-political issues including terrorism, imperialism, secret societies, before getting deeply personal and ambiguous for the remainder of the album. The album starts off with a bang with “72 Hookers,” which depending on how you look at it, is just a punk version of the “love wins” slogan. Except remove the love part, and replace it with blowjobs as a way to stop extremists from detonating the vest. The strongest flex may come in “My Sycophant Others” where Fat Mike calls out the yes men and pee drinks around him. Self-referencing has always been a strong point of NOFX, if you recall “We Got Two Jealous Agains” from ‘The War on Errorism,” Mike dives into his divorce with “I’ve Got One Jealous Again, Again” which rings true for anyone who lost a long relationship and had to divvy up a mixed record collection. Seriously, never, ever mix record collections.
This was NOFX’s first release on Epitaph records and features a dominatrix riding on top of an airplane as if it was a mechanical bull. Curious minds may enquire, is the dominatrix really big, or is the plane really small? Are there people inside the plane? Are they not worried about the massive scantily clad woman wielding a whip, straddling the vehicle they are in? “S&M Airlines” has a lot of references to travel especially the title track reads like a wet dream and may include the earliest (and only) reference to a rimjob in a punk song that features Greg Graffin and Brett Gurewitz doing harmonies. “You Drink, You Drive, You Spill,” while notably less horny than the title track, does touch on the dangers of sober driving citing statistics that show a majority of accidents are not alcohol-related. The result of a deep dive of this album, you may find yourself in a coach seat hopeful the stewardess is going to strap you in.
America’s worst president, George W. Bush, clearly kicked up a lot of negative sentiment among punks and NOFX were the clear torchbearers in fighting him through music. For many kids born in the ‘90s, this album was their first that seriously took on politics, and it was released while they were simultaneously going through puberty, unfortunately it was also long before they reached voting age. To say this album was exclusively political couldn’t be further from the truth however. Breaking out of the duality of the two punk rock retirement plans, being a skinhead or a rockabilly guy (which is exclusively based on how bad they get hit by male pattern baldness), and suggesting that there is in fact a retirement community for old punks in “Mattersville”. The album closes on a somber note with “Whoops, I OD’d” and it’s strongly reminiscent of a time when you may have been in your teens and had to get your stomach pumped with your parents looking at you sideways.
The year is 1994, and just a few short months after Green Day released “Dookie,” “Punk In Drublic” is released. One can easily ascertain that this is NOFX’s most well-known, and commercially successful release without even looking it up. The album is fondly remembered as some of the band’s best work by people who still ride skateboards in their late 30s. Hooks aside, Fat Mike may subtly be foreshadowing the cultural zeitgeist of why people should rightfully be embarrassed for being white with “Don’t Call Me White,” still the foresight he had did not save him from releasing this on Fat Wreck over Epitaph. If you’re only going to get one NOFX album, this is probably the one you want.
An oft-overlooked album in the NOFX catalog that captured a lot of the 2016 milieu surrounding the band. Seemingly Fat Mike makes attempts at sobriety, opens up about performing in drag, sings about STDs, and tackles drug use (okay every NOFX album tackles drug use but still). This may be the deepest, most personal NOFX album, and easily the biggest bummer of an album. Not being content with making you feel bad about your relationship with your parents, your drug use, the times you should have used a condom, it touches on the death of Tony Sly, hanging with a friend who has cancer, and the end of the world. Pour yourself a drink, you’ll need it.