NOFX
Coaster

After 3 years of silence, NOFX return in 2009 with "Coaster".

A decent comeback on the scene, the golden days have passed but one can always try to get close. The freshness of the album is already noticeable from the cover, which shows a CD used as a coaster with the writing "Music included" on the back, the same CD is used as a frisbee.

The work opens at high speed with "We Called It America" where a great influence from Bad Religion is felt, presenting a vaguely retro-tasting riff and a pretty angry text that emphasizes the falsity and squalor of the so-called American dream. The continuation of the album is entrusted to a mixture of classic NOFX-style melodic hc, Ska, and other external influences.

Alternating ironic and playful pieces such as "Eddie, Bruce and Paul" and "Creeping Out Sara" (these two very ironically and distantly address the topic of homosexuality) to more serious ones like "My Orphan Year", a kind of autobiographical track by Fat Mike. A standout theme of Coaster is the religious controversy, as religion indeed suffers heavy attacks in "Blasphemy" (The Victimless Crimes) which targets the fake moralists who consider every damn thing immoral or blasphemous with lyrics that I more than fully endorse, and "Best God In Show" which, on a sort of ska-reggae, presents a brilliant text about the religion-science conflict in which the former comes out worse for wear.

"The Agony Of Victory" and "I Am An Alcoholic" represent a particular side of NOFX, which one can still expect from the four, while "Suits Ladders" and the ironic "One Million Coasters" are NOFX in their purest form. The golden days might be in the past but "Coaster" commands respect.