Record #798: Five Iron Frenzy – Until This Shakes Apart (2021)

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.

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Record #634: The Dingees – The Crucial Conspiracy (2001)

In the summer between eighth grade and freshman year of high school, I gained possession of a Tooth & Nail compilation entitled Songs From the Penalty Box, Vol 4That CD was my introduction to a number of bands that would change my life, such as Squad Five-O, Blenderhead, Craig’s Brother, Calibretto 13, and The Juliana Theory.

But nestled at the very end of the compilation was a track called “Spraypaint (We Won’t Carry Over),” a riotous blend of garage rock, punk, and ska that entranced me. And for the last several years, I have been trying unsuccessfully to track down a vinyl copy, without success.

Then last week, a record store on the East Coast discovered a box of copies that they just forgot to open. And so, I have finally added this masterpiece to my collection.

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Record #459: Five Iron Frenzy – Quantity is Job 1 (1998)

quantity is job 1

The year is 2000. I’m a nerdy kid who’s been transitioning from listening to nothing but Weird Al to getting into harder stuff like punk and hardcore.

As much as I loved heavier stuff like Zao and Project 86 (Drawing Black Lines is still an incredible album, fight me), there wasn’t really an output for my wacky sense of humor.

Then, on a youth trip to Washington DC, I discovered ska.

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