The very last scene in the 2006 documentary American Hardcore finds Zander Schloss of the Circle Jerks delivering a eulogy. "It was over a long time ago! It's over, okay? Go home! Your cage is clean." The screen goes black just as Black Flag's "Nervous Breakdown" starts up; the vocal is by Keith Morris, Black Flag co-founder and Schloss' longtime boss in the Circle Jerks. It's a funny juxtaposition, considering the recent history of the Circle Jerks; though Morris attempted to keep the Jerks' engine running after yet another failed go, he and Burning Brides frontman Dimitri Coats teamed up, called a couple of buddies, ground out 16 songs. The results would stop in their tracks anybody who'd dare declare punk rock dead. Morris was around for the birth of hardcore, and from the sound of his new band OFF!, they're going to have to drag him away from the stuff, screaming.
For OFF!, Morris and Coats rang up bassist Steven McDonald of the perennially underrated Redd Kross, and Rocket From the Crypt/Earthless drummer Mario "Ruby Mars" Rubalcaba. Coats may be OFF!'s least known quantity, but here, as with the stoner rock of his Brides, he's got an adaptable style and ear for detail that are perfect for this recapturing job. McDonald holds down the low end with an uncharacteristic simplicity that suits these airtight tracks to a T. And Ruby Mars couldn't have been a tough call, hell of a drummer that he is; you'd have to be to hold these songs together. These guys might be punks, but after years in the game, they're total pros. And all that backstory melts away in three seconds on this bruiser of a record, one that reignites the hardcore spirit and turn-on-a-dime intensity of Morris' work with Black Flag and early Circle Jerks years without ever coming off like a history lesson.
OFF! is Morris' show, and for all their help getting him back to his roots, the band keeps out of his way, firing off blistering, not-a-second-too-long rumbles that feel shot out of a cannon. But having some new blood in the room lights a raging fire under Morris, and he pounces on these tracks. As ever, he speak-shouts with an unusual clarity, even when he's spraying out a ton of words at once. But it's the adaptability of his voice that's most stunning, the way he'll start out spitting and then swoop down into a scream. Lyrically, the OFF! songs seem to play on Morris' role as an angry young man all grown up; a line like "you wonder why I'm always screaming?" would sound fine coming from some 17-year-old with a glue-stuck mohawk, but given Morris' elder statespunk position, the question deepens, the emphasis falls on the "always." The young dude declaring "I've Had It" three decades back still shouts "Fuck People" with equal fervor.
First Four EPs crams 16 tracks into just over 17 minutes; the thing's packed so tightly, an extra second here or there could feel like one too many. This is lean, propulsive hardcore, played just as it would've been in L.A. circa 1981. The live-in-a-room recording lets you all but hear the sweat drip on the mic, Morris' hair slapping into Coats' amp. The breathless intensity of Morris' vocals is matched by the one-and-done feel of the musicianship; as Coats told Pitchfork last month, "the demo is the record," and no decision's been overthought. Morris spent a decade and a half trying to get the Circle Jerks together enough to make another album, and this thing sounds like it was made in two days, almost for the hell of it, and those lowered stakes result in a ramped-up fervor.
Even with the short runtime, First Four EPs really takes it out of you; each EP takes you through highs and lows in quick succession, so hearing all four straight through is like being put through a tenderizer. For all their ripchord intensity, I wish they'd made just a little more room for McDonald, whose work with Redd Kross proved him more adept at sneaking intricate bass lines under hardcore rhythms than he's allowed here. But these are, after all, the first four EPs, which assumes there's more to come. You could argue that there's a nasty conservative streak running through these four EPs, that Morris already made better versions of this record with his previous bands. But OFF! feels less like a regression than a regrouping, a shoring up of old strengths with the hopes of recapturing an old feeling. And that much they nail.
In an indie rock landscape that typically values complex arrangements, subtlety, and good taste, OFF! are not just refreshing, but totally necessary. It's an economic shithole out there right now-- the same conditions that led to hardcore in the first place. This music is built for a climate of frustration and powerlessness, and its bare-knuckled punch-in-the-face is a long-needed wake-up call to nostalgic escapism. Get mad instead.
