Out Of Order

These Canadians, not to be confused with the 1980's band from Chicago, offer a toughened melodic-punk approach that recalls the golden era of No Idea releases, with a bevy of gritty sing-along tendencies and smart lyrics, like The Grass is Greener, which probes memory, envy, youthful kicks, and the inevitable sense of time that relentlessly pushes us ahead until we begin to lose irreplaceable moments forever.

Other tunes focus on the confusing dimensions of relationships going awry and people wrestling with all the uncertainty and rage, like pulling hair out, feeling boxed and trapped, and trying to figure out how to navigate all the crap and disarray and return to being partners, lovers, even each other's teddy bears. Still others like Saints and Sinners, with its unrelenting pulsing rhythm, and incredible drumming, is an evocation of the underground music world -- the riffraff community caught in the binds of renegade rock'n'roll, rampaging through the streets, loud as machine guns. In that subculture, companions are sheer volume and feedback, and the assorted characters that make up the motley scene are jointly hitched to a life of midnight sonic wreckage.

The rest of the album is just as appealing and well-heated, an assembly of lean mid-paced speed and larger-than-life hoarse choruses, plus nimble bass that threads through it all with a coiled fever. In the case of Under the Knife, the tune aims at all the metaphors surrounding and even drowning our lives -- the walls we build, the fires that burn, angels gone missing, and living on the knife's edge. And, no joke, a small hint of classic rock like Thin Lizzy shows up on the guitar solo.

And do not miss the suicide tale of Crack in the Mirror, which depicts the life of a prom queen who turns to barbiturates, killing herself as the town scratches its head, only later finding diaries that reveal the shame, self-hate, and self-loathing that consumed her life, which was put on a pedestal, painted up like a pristine doll, hiding the awful truth of her misery. And the tune Cain catalogs a whole another kind of pain: the biblical world of bishops, cardinals, and divine orders, all subsumed in acid rain, bloody faces, smoke plumes, and scorched terrain.

So, whether the band is mining their communities for grinding stories about the dead or the restless, or addressing larger narratives about the role of religion and damnation, they burn with intelligence, a balanced musicality unafraid to borrow across genres, and a sincerity that drips from the beginning to the end.