NOFX are the band you love-to-hate and hate-to-love. Despite their best efforts to alienate fans, from the infamous Cokie the Clown tequila shot reveal to helping Underoath drop out of Warped Tour in 2006. And worse yet, they effectively got blackballed from playing any shows in the United States in 2018. This was the fallout after making a terrible and insensitive joke about the shooting at the Harvest 81 country festival in Vegas that had occurred the year prior while playing in Vegas. NOFX are their own worst enemies, as Mike sings about on “My Favorite Enemy.” Yet they’ve carved out a significant niche in the history of punk rock.

And now the anti-hero punk band are back with Double Album, their follow-up to last year’s Single Album. Double Album contains their familiar brand of fast, catchy songs and off-beat humor. This hits right out the gate when listeners realize that Double Album is in fact only one disc.

Single Album was an attempt at making a more musically progressive album. Double Album is straightforward and back-to-the-basics. If your favorite NOFX cut was the 18-minute rock opera “The Decline” then you will probably gravitate more towards Single. If you can never get enough of “Linoleum” then you will love Double.

The songs are the standard mix of irreverent (inappropriate) humor and self-deprecation. “Don’t Count On Me” takes care to insult all members of the band, but especially El Hefe. During the poignant ska break, Hefe takes vocals and compares all the members to Star Trek characters. Then Mike jumps back in with what is the funniest line on the entire record, reminding Hefe “There’s still no Mexicans in Space.”

“Is It Too Soon If Time Is Relative?” is an entire song dedicated to insulting the late Stephen Hawking. Depending on your personality, this is either egregious or hilarious. But if you’re still listening to NOFX this late in their career, it’s what you’ve come to expect.

They also continue to take pot-shots at punk rock and punk rock fandom. In an interesting bit of trivia, the track “Punk Rock Cliché” was written for Blink 18. Supposedly it was turned down after they discovered Fat Mike wrote the song. That’s too bad because it’s miles ahead of their first single following Tom rejoining the band, “Edging.” The guitar riff certainly sounds like modern era Blink. Some decry this song as lesser because it was meant for a different band. But it’s catchy and fits in the NOFX larger catalogue.

Fat Mike also continues his honest streak about his sexuality. Since “coming out” as gender queer and revealing his onstage cross-dressing is more than just a joke, Fat Mike has become an unwitting role model in the punk LGBTQ+ community. And nobody is more surprised than Mike himself.

Musically, the band is at the top of their form, even if their form follows their particular musical blueprint. The bass line that on the opening track “Darby Crashing the Party” is the best Mike’s ever done. And the guitar work and drums still sound tight as ever.

The band has announced it will be officially calling it quits following a tour next year. But Double Album will not be their last release. Fat Mike said in a recent interview they still have three albums yet to drop before it’s all said and done. Which is great news for fans of a band that want to act like great disappointments, but never disappointments. Stream Double Album NOW and follow NOFX on Instagram HERE.