The Canadian crew's sophomore effort has finally arrived, and it's a belter!
It’s skate punk, Jim, but not as we know it. In truth, to saddle Dutch Nuggets with that tag would be to sell them short – they’re too inventive and too downright odd to be written off as mere bit-players on the soundtrack of the latest incarnation of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
‘Fishbowl’d!’ is the Montreal quartet’s second record, and arrives just over a decade on from their debut. Three chords and the truth are nowhere near enough for these guys; opener ‘Ignorance Is Bliss’ is bursting with the kind of spidery riff action that’s especially impressive when played (as with most of ‘Fishbowl’d!’) at 100mph. There’s a big dose of fellow Canadian punks Propagandhi in the mix, along with the impassioned vocals and speed of early Rise Against, and a knack for a tune that recalls prime-era Satanic Surfers.
You may have already heard (and seen the video) for the superb ‘Dead-Tired’, which sees the band stuff a whole lotta full-throttle hardcore, gang vocals, plenty of screaming, a noodly instrumental mini-break, and a few melodic flourishes here and there…all into less than a minute and a half. That’s par for the course for much of ‘Fishbowl’d!’, although they also have a tendency to surprise us with the odd anthemic sing-along moment – most notably on the four-minute centrepiece ‘Catharsis’ and the (actually very tuneful) ‘Discordant’
The apparent ‘let’s throw everything at the wall and see how much of it sticks’ approach to songwriting means that occasionally it feels like you’re listening to a bunch of (admittedly great) ideas smashed together, rather than a coherent song – but maybe that’s just my goldfish-like attention span talking. As a whole, though, this is the work of a band not short on inspiration or inner fire.
Having recently reviewed a fair few great records of this ilk from the old (90s-era) guard of the genre, we can only conclude that skate punk is going through something of a resurgence, so Dutch Nuggets have timed their comeback beautifully – and done a damn fine job of it on ‘Fishbowl’d!’. Their Instagram describes them as “a punk band that is very slowly making very fast music”; maybe so, but this record has absolutely been worth the wait.
- Ignorance Is Bliss
- Fishbones
- Dead-Tired
- Ex-Troglodyte
- Three Of Clubs
- Catharsis
- Liminal Cage
- Plastic Lives
- II
- Discordant
- Red Filter Disaster
- Same Old Dark Ages
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I spend my days teaching English to foreign students, and my evenings attending as many gigs as possible. Raised mainly on a diet of 90s third-wave punk, my tastes have grown to include just about anything from trad ska to thrash metal. The Ramones are my musical gods.
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