Word: punks
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...best punk albums, the ones that stay with you, the ones that matter, share a secret. Take Rancid's strong new album, Life Won't Wait. Rancid is a band that, in its songs, inhabits a tough, gritty world of drinking, joblessness, back-alley drug deals and disillusioned immigrants; a world where corporations crush workers, governments lie to their citizens, and punk rock offers one of the few paths toward salvation. The songs on the California-based band's new album have names like Bloodclot, Black Lung and Cash, Culture & Violence; the guitar work is raw and roaring...
Every few pages, McPhee takes out his English major's rock hammer and prizes out a sample of whizbang geology lingo: plutons, grabens, horsts, gabbro, incompetent rock, punk rock, catsteps. Slickensides, if you please. Too much gong banging would become grandiose noise, however, and too much info simply another second-year geology text. McPhee, who is beguiled by his geologists and can make you see why, has a good feel for when to ease off into anecdotes. He goes after the rock wonks with butterfly net and magnifying glass...
...that minuscule but unavoidable flaw out of the way, Rancid begins unleashing the usual all-out aural assault with the album's first single, "Bloodclot." Several "hey-ho's" and "nah-nah's" later, with the melodies acting as some sort of immediately infectious drug and the muscle-bound punk cowboy aesthetic getting full play, the stage is set for the rest of the record to branch out. "Bloodclot" is a successful segue from "Wolves" to the rest of the new album...
Success for a punk is quite the paradox, at least in term of ideology, and Armstrong spends a whole song contemplating the fleeting whirlwind journey of Rancid's radio success in "Backslide": "nobody knows me/I'm all alone/I gotta go/Hollywood bus stop and the party's over/I gotta go." Exemplifying the amazing lines exhibited throughout Life Won't Wait, crooning, "have you ever been looked at by your past and it will never let you go." You get the impression that the members of Rancid weren't perfectly aware of what they were getting into by releasing the modern rock...
...title song, "WrongfulSuspicion" and "Coppers." Jamaican reggae starBuju Banton guests on these tracks, strengtheningthe new Rancid voice with an authentic tongue. OnLife Won't Wait, a good chunk of the vocalsare provided by Banton, although Armstronguniquely offers his gravelly, unadorned slur tothe mix. One of the best punk-reggae confluenceson the album, "Hooligans," will get you hoppingalong to the beat and the message(and wonderingwhether Rancid inadvertently stole a short Blondieriff...