If you would have asked me ten years ago which band’s new album I’d be most excited for in 2021, it would have taken me hundreds of guesses to finally land on Five Iron Frenzy. After all, I first discovered them in 7th grade, and I’d hope to have grown out of goofy ska songs and Pants Operas in the space of twenty-one years.
However, I realize now that all of their wry, irreverent humor was a sort of Trojan horse, through which they smuggled cutting criticisms of the Church’s hypocrisy toward racism, police brutality, and greed into youth group kids’ Discmans.
While these messages have always been hiding amid the upstrokes, horn lines, and bad puns, Until This Shakes Apart pulls off all pretense, abandoning their wooden horse in favor of a full-on frontal assault.
If you didn’t know, I play in a ska punk band called 