OFF!: Wasted Years [FAT POSSUM]

Why you'll love it

This Fat Possum reissue comes with a printed inner sleeve carrying the lyrics. Wasted Years reached No. 67 on the Billboard 200, a fine result for a hardcore record, and keeps Raymond Pettibon's art on the cover.

This edition

• Printed inner sleeve with lyrics

About the album

Keith Morris sang on Black Flag's first record and fronted the Circle Jerks, so by the time he started OFF! with guitarist Dimitri Coats he had nothing left to prove and no intention of slowing down. Bassist Steven Shane McDonald and drummer Mario Rubalcaba completed a line-up of punk lifers.

For their second studio album the band recorded 19 songs to analog tape in their rehearsal space and kept 16 of them, with Coats producing. "Void You Out" premiered on Rolling Stone, "Red White and Black" and "Legion of Evil" charge in hard, "Hypnotized" and "Death Trip on the Party Train" keep the pressure up, and the title track closes the album at full tilt. Morris and Coats wrote the songs together. Vice Records first issued it in April 2014, and Fat Possum brought it back in 2022.

Pettibon, who drew Black Flag's flyers back in the day, gives the whole thing the right look. Sixteen songs go by so fast you'll have time to put the kettle on afterwards, and possibly to play it again while it boils.

Also at Kops: more OFF! on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On Fat Possum (cat# FP1795-1), a reissue of the 2014 album.