Cheshire Cat

To break the monotony of listening to forty-something albums by one singular artist, I figured I’d start another dive to concurrently go with that one. I picked this band because they’re one of the more unique bands of their genre and are a load of fun. Anyways, enough babble. Review time.

Blink (later renamed to what we’d know them as today), the three piece SoCal skate punk band, would sign with independent punk label Cargo Records after the previous year’s underground demo Buddha. This, along with a local fanbase, would allow them to get AirPlay on lead single, and their very first single, M+Ms and record a cheap music video. So when the band eventually put out their first full length (again, under Blink) that February ‘95 it was…a very minor success. They sold copies, but nothing impressive. Musically, it was simple and straight to the point skate punk, inspired by bands like Bad Religion and most importantly skate punk legends NOFX. They’d only begin to see some major buzz a year later.

Regardless, this album doesn’t add a whole lot in the grand scheme of fast pop punk or skate punk, and really doesn’t stack up with what they’d do later on, but some cuts here show a great load of potential. In all honesty, the bloated length (this album should seriously be five tracks shorter), very bland mix, similar sounding songs and the terrible joke tracks at the end hold this back from being a pretty good and fun debut. There is highlights here, though. The aforementioned lead single M+Ms and the more serious Cacophony paint a more clear picture of what this band would do in a short period of time. I can hear that a majority of these tracks would sound better live than they do on record, as the fast paced fun and energy is very present.

Vocally and lyrically, the band is very amateur here. Mark and Tom don’t sound horrendous but the former sounds a little unconfident and the latter sounds far too raspy for how he’d sound later on (you know what I’m talking about). A lot of the lyrics here are just obnoxiously stupid or very basic, or a mixture of the two, which makes the album get a little annoying. Speaking of annoying, the humor of this album is pretty obnoxious and repetitive. It’s a lot of fart and masturbation and sex jokes. This sort of humor is something they’d get better at adding later on, but for now I’d rather not hear about someone’s dad having metal balls in their ass, or Mark Hoppus jerking off. Speaking of annoying humor, the previously brought up “joke” songs are easily the worst and most insufferable songs on here. They really bring down this album and are painfully unfunny. There’s the metal ball ass song Ben Wah Balls that doesn’t even make sense but is just trying too hard, the unlistenable uh..experiment(?)/joke that is Just About Done which is easily the worst song I’ve heard by the group, and Depends which is a song about them pissing their pants. Yeah. Real climactic ending here.

Suffice it to say, all the bad production, unfunny sex jokes, weak vocal performances, asinine lyrics, and repetitive songs doesn’t take away from the fact that there is real potential being shown here and the band is far from done progressing.

Favorite Tracks: Carousel, M+Ms, Strings, Sometimes, Cacophony

Okay Tracks: All The One’s That Aren’t The Last Three

Least Favorite Tracks: The Last Three.