Wow, this record opens the flood gates with a deluge of past memories.  Hours spent many Saturdays in friends’ basements, garages, wherever when we’d hang out and collaborate on our next “single.” Just jamming away like Metallica wanna-be’s. Our grown out bowl cuts blocking our vision from what we were actually doing on the strings, but that didn’t matter. We knew our instruments well enough that we’d find the chord, and if not, it only sounded that much more raw and from the heart. Not so rehearsed like those lame MTV puppets that we despised. They didn’t know what music was. Probably my favorite thing was how everyone would come in with their own ideas and we could never fit any particular genre. Let’s do a Deftones cover. Let’s speed up to a punk rock tempo—I just heard this cool NOFX song. I wanna try mixing together some raps—Rage against the Machine tears it up. Let’s make it more ripping—check out this awesome Integrity track. We were all over the map: Hair Metal, Nu Metal, Punk, Hardcore, Classic Rock, you name it. It was just about playing the hell out of your guitar and having a good time.
That’s totally what White Fang sounds like it’s about. “Greatful to Shred” indeed. All they care about is shredding, maintaining that ggg, ggg, ggg, ggg, ggg, ggg, ggg, ggg heaviness. The vocals, especially when combined with backups are classically garage band with obvious punk-hardcore influence.  The low grade recording quality really tops it off though, so essential to a record like this. It’s got the playfulness and I don’t give a f*** attitude that typifies adolescence. I love how the album ends with annoying feedback that so wonderfully epitomizes this whole tongue in cheek record. Check out some of these song titles: “Can’t Find My Weed,” “Fuck Up a Fascist (I’m Down),” and “Feeling Shitty.” Oh man. To be that age again. Even though I’m moved out and on my own I still expect to hear someone’s mom calling down from the top of the stairs to turn it down. An absolutely fun and cathartic record. Thanks White Fang for the lift down Memory Lane. Great rock n’ roll rebellion photo art. It even comes with a huge foldout black and white band poster on newsprint. Also, free download code. Good stuff.
7/10
