Wasted Years
When they emerged, OFF! were full of life, boiling hardcore down to its most essential elements. Their latest album, Wasted Years, adds another 16 tracks to the band's catalog; it's their longest album at 23 minutes, and yet it still sounds like it could've used some careful editing.
“I won’t be a casualty,” screeches Keith Morris in the song of the same name—one of 16 punk uppercuts that appear on Wasted Years, the third album by Off!. The supergroup formed in 2009, and since then Morris and crew have done their best to resurrect a narrowly specific sound: namely the snot-caked, cage-rattling…
Volume turned up, timer turned down, political references on, experimentation turned off!
It's tempting to wonder what was going on with Keith Morris from 1995, when the Circle Jerks released the less than remarkable Oddities, Abnormalities, and Curiosities, and 2009, when he helped form OFF! from the wreckage of an unfinished Circle Jerks album, because even though he worked on a variety of projects during that period, there was little to suggest the guy still had it in him to lead a great band.
Some aspects of life are inevitable. Politicians will break their promises, British summertime offers more shades of grey than literary-pretentious trashporn, and there will never, ever be anything good on telly when you’re skint. Another one for the list: Keith Morris will always be pissed off – and thank fuck for that.