NOFX
"Double Album" on Fat Wreck - Out Now!
Rock Am Ring / Rock im Park Festivals in Summer 2023
On December 2, 2022, punk rock icons NOFX released their new long player "Double Album“ digitally via Fat Wreck, produced by Fat Mike in collaboration with Bill Stevenson (Descendents) and Jason Livermore (Blasting Room).
The physical versions will be on the shelves in this country on December 16!
Why is there a double album at this point in the band's career?
"I wish I knew," replies frontman Fat Mike. "OK. I mean, we have a lot of records. I'm not sure how many there are, let's say 15 with 10 more EPs and 65 7"s. I wanted to make a double album because there aren't any good albums out there. Pink Floyd's "The Wall" is pretty much everything. Quadrophenia is fine if you're a Who fan, I guess. Definitely not the "White Album" [by the Beatles]. I don't think anyone else has made good double albums. Certainly not Hüsker Dü, Minutemen, or Smashing Pumpkins."
"I really like our last release "Single Album", the songs on "Double Album" were recorded at the same time, but this one was only finished two years later. I think it's a very entertaining album, maybe our funniest. I think it's what a lot of our fans want to hear. And it's a great third and fourth side for a double album. I achieved my goal of making a solid double album, but it just took a lot longer than I originally expected," comments Fat Mike
Tracklist:
01. Darby Crashing Your Party
02. My Favorite Enemy
03. Don't Count on Me
04. Johanna Constant Teen
05. Punk Rock Cliché
06. Fuck Day Six
07. Is It Too Soon if Time Is Relative?
08. Alcopollack
09. Three Against Me
10. Gone with the Heroined
With the reunion with punk rock legends Bill Stevenson and Jason Livermore as producers/engineers, it is not an exaggeration to say that NOFX are now making their best music. That doesn't mean that everything else they've done was crap. But "Double Album" reminds both die-hard fans and casual listeners that NOFX were not born to follow trends. In fact, NOFX - Fat Mike, guitarists Eric Melvin and El Hefe, and drummer "Smelly" Eric Sandin - have etched their logo into the veneer of punk rock culture for decades. With almost 40 years in this circus, you meet people and do/see/conspire the wildest things. Do you remember that one of the conditions of the NOFX book "The Hepatitis Bathtub" was that none of the band members could see what the others wrote about them? Well, this time Mike got permission to incorporate people's quirks and idiosyncrasies into songs to achieve maximum speed and humor.
There’s "Joanna Constant Teen", a 78-second homage to the dominatrix who lived in Mike's New York Airbnb for six weeks during the production of his musical Home Street Home. ("She just moved in and played with me every night. She always said, 'Mike, it's time to write a new song. Start, or you know what will happen!' That was really cool. Obviously, I didn't write that much.") "Alcopollack" is about booking agent David Pollack, who has worked with the band for over 30 years and has lost more than a few of his clients due to his outrageous honesty. ("I asked him if it was okay to put this on the album, and he said, 'Yeah, sure. It's mean, but funny.'") "Fuck Day Six" is a story about the time Mike got clean in a Buddhist-run rehab clinic (pun intended), with plenty of name-dropping (and Deuce). ("Anyone who has gotten off opioids knows what 'Day Six' means.") "Is It Too Soon If Time Is Relative" is a hilarious and cruel reckoning with celebrated author/physicist Stephen Hawking. ("I wrote this before he died," Mike apologizes. "It's not quite as funny anymore. I wanted him to hear it.")
Of course, Mike has built a career turning the word "self" into "self-loathing", and he won't stop now. With future classics like "Darby Crashing Your Party", "Punk Rock Cliché", the song that was cut from the Blink 182 album "California" after the band found out that Matt Skiba had written it along with Fatty (even though it was their favorite song. Mike also admits that the Blink version of the song was better). The too real, too bittersweet, too funny tracks "My Favorite Enemy" and "Don't Count On Me“ show that he still has no problem getting a cream pie in the face, even if it contains glass shards and sharpened nails.
"You have to laugh about everything," Mike reveals, "because the world is falling apart right now, and you have to have a good attitude to not take things too seriously. That's how I've always done it. I make people laugh every day. I usually do it in a self-deprecating way, that's just how I go through life: I have as much fun as possible. That's what life is about - trying to find as much happiness as you can. And spreading happiness. I feel like that should be my purpose in life - to spread joy."
The determination to continue making captivating music, raising the bar for punk, and doing the best for their punk rock legacy makes NOFX simply unstoppable. "Double Album" is full of moods, stories, and tempos that are a bit faster than an ice cream truck sliding backward down a hill. So what is their secret? Quite simply: NOFX don’t do things by halves.
Mike laughs. "I do everything at full throttle. Literally."
