Noogy

Having gigged with the likes of MDC and TSOL, and blazing their way through the punk underground, Noogy continues to be the face of emergent punk for the new pissed-off generation hell-bent on not conforming to a series of lame expectations. For instance, though tracks like “Back At It Again” are full-on attacks on nitwits from the KKK to rednecks and the Alt-Right, the band fully adopted old school hip-hop as its delivery mode, so anyone with a passing appreciation for Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, and Beastie Boys will appreciate the sonic flashbacks: the references to Jessie Owens, car alarms, suckas, dope, and aerosol cans are a bonus.

But like the punk rock hall of glory, from Operation Ivy to Rancid, the band fully and typically embraces sing-along anthem makers, with hard-crunch, gnarly biographies (strung out youth, unfair worlds, troubled kids), strong pummeling bass lines, and roughhewn vocals brimming with sincerities burning through the throbbing guitar racket.

And they are already on the look-back-and-learn train, full of frustration about hipsters decrying a dead scene while kids are still walking the unruly path, shouting their rabid truths and trying to make the world turn towards a better end. And you will hear plenty of Oi choruses, ska-punk resurrection, and bitter honesty on roiling tunes like My Life, which brims with dysfunctional family pictures (slurring drunk uncles, blurred lines between right and wrong, brothers on parole) but also a strong sense of punk togetherness: the world’s a mess, but bruised and battered kids got each other.

And Grandma’s House, with its slower party swing, is not some cheery postcard but a harrowing notebook about kids getting stabbed on front lawns with a screw driver, plus living amid hand-me down syringes and stolen TV cable too. It’s a rousing working-class class anthem waxing about edgy neighborhoods, tin cans full of Chef-Boy-R-Dee, and futures knotted up with dead-end lives, not some factory floor.

The rest of the album never lets up, including the sleazy, skateboard-bruised ska tune featuring an unlikely hero, Robinhood, in which the character on parole smokes pipes and wrestles goods from cars. And they don't forget their sense of history, heritage, place, and pain on breathless, spattering Teen Idol, which explores the game-changing assassination in Dallas (goodbye, President JFK) but also the war between people at home, the desire to be a star on Hollywood Boulevard, and the tightly scheduled media formats that shape people’s sense of identity and purpose.

In all, the band is a limber and forceful expression of hybrid punk, partly indebted to past waves and heroes but also dedicated to sharing their own stamp of originality, gumption, and spirit, which ring resolute and powerful in the face of quickly fading fads.