Review Summary: The definition of averageness.
The Old Firm Casuals is the latest almost-unknown side project of Rancid’s lead guitarist Lars Frederiksen. With that said, one would expect any effort from a band like this to be at least slightly interesting. The sad truth is that it really isn’t.
The album is weak and repetitive, consisting of average, too catchy and in some way “melodic” Oi!/Street Punk tracks such as
Perry Boys, which was meant to be the centrepiece of the entire work, instead it just represents the lack of creativity and imagination Rancid, and as a result his guitarist, is going through.
In 2009 the band who was back in the Nineties the symbol of punk revival released possibly their worst LP,
Let The Dominoes Fall, and after five years I’ve still got the feeling that the next album will not be a lot better, considering this OFC’s album and the single Rancid launched some months ago.
The tracks are not bad, but they sound all the same and the arrengement is neat but poor and scarceful.
You won’t believe it, but there’s nothing much more to say about this album, when about these guys I can honestly say that they aren’t even worth it live.
Lars cannot sing as he could twenty years ago: his voice now is so inconsistent you won’t recognise it’s the same which in 1995 performed
Roots Radicals.
At least he can still play the guitar, while the other members aren’t really that good at their instruments: the second guitarist is really average and the drummer anonymously impersonal, whereas the bass player is pretty awful. Watching him strumming the bass as it were an acoustic guitar could make even Sid Vicious shiver.
The whole thing, band and album, is just not worth your precious time.
If you were interested in checking this out, you’d better spend your 30 minutes listening to a considerable part of Minor Threat discography or watching an old Top Gear episode.
A disappointing
2.5/5
