This is not a trigger warning.
I repeat, this is not a trigger warning.
Ah, I love this buzzword. One could also say "Auslöse-Reize" or something similar, but English sounds cooler, more international, and so on.
The band that has released their third album titled "Dr. Album" is aptly named NO TRIGGER.
Is it that boring?
I believe rather that the band from Worcester (Massachusetts, USA) comes straight from the past. Almost like traveling back to the future in a DeLorean.
NO TRIGGER opens their album with "Antifantasy".
What is that? That was my first thought.
That's like something from at least 20 years ago. That was my second thought.
Melodic punk rock of the American, particularly Californian school, as it was played over twenty years ago at the height of the eponymous music wave. Awesome!
It continues cheerfully. Highly melodic, catchy, well-placed choruses, breaks, hooks, and a vocal style that feels totally familiar to me. Man, this is like the best times of NoFx, Lagwagon, Green Day, and Co.
Wonderful, I’m reminiscing and find myself grinning and jumping around in my apartment.
This is really the music that I and many others grew up with. I thought such things didn’t exist anymore. Sometimes they come back... the good things, the great music, and of course the memories associated with it.
However, we don’t just want to wallow in the past. This music fits perfectly for a summer evening in the skate park.
The first seven songs are top-notch melodic (skate) punk.
With the eighth song, the sextet (they sometimes play with three guitars!) significantly slows down the tempo. "Water by the beer can" is a semi-acoustic piece. It starts off quietly until the guitar and drums kick in. A song that perfectly fits a hangover, if such a thing even exists.
With "Foggy Mountain Bus Stop", we have the shortest piece on the album. Played with a ukulele and a funny text. Yes, the band doesn’t take themselves too seriously. Speaking of beer. This hop-containing beverage is part of many songs, and it was the same 20 years ago. Fun, beer, what you do in that intoxicated state, and how the hangover feels afterward. However, even though the band has a good sense of humor and highlights the absurdities of humanity and their own actions well, they are by no means just a fun band. That’s something that’s always written somehow, for years, as if one had to justify having fun. Quite strange.
In any case, the band members are all no longer in their 20s, and so it happens that they are chased by kids on their scooters, as seen in the video for "No Tattoos" (you can see the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeII7MBWOpk). Nowadays, bare bodies are a rarity. It was different more than 20 years ago.
NO TRIGGER releases an almost perfect album with "Dr. Album". An album that appeals to both the older generation of punks, like me, as well as the younger generations. It has almost everything an album needs.
If NO TRIGGER is surfing at the top of a new melodic punk wave in a few years, I wouldn’t be surprised!
