OFF – “Compared to What”/”Rotten Apple”
This band has been extremely busy in a relatively short time span. Their
latest single from Off is a combination of remaking on several fronts. “Compared to What” is an aural mashup
that combines their music to the lyrics of the Gene McDaniels penned jazz classic (best known as a hit for Les McCann in 1971).
The flip side is a cover of a late 60s garage punk raveup that has a confident swagger that melds the optimism of th
time the song was written with a throw down wall of sound and fury. Both songs are cranked up and transformed into tear
down the barricades hardcore with chords that pummel into your skull and near speed of light song tempos. In the past
year OFF hasn’t so much reinvented the wheel as adapted and revived it to suit their purposes, and this single continues
in that path while showing that songs from radically different genres can have common ground (“Compared to What”
is a prime example of that). This 45 is another example of intense music from a band that shows “da kidz”Ô
how punk rock is really done. (BOONE)
(Vice Records)