Rancid - And Out Come The Wolves (1996)

Classic punk rock – the kind that will stick around beyond next week's Billboard chart – tends to reach down from your ears and slap a viselike grip on your nether regions. It's the perfect mix of power and passion, sweat and blood, balls and attitude. It's not even real important that the band know how to play their instruments well, if at all. It's all of the promises of rock & roll in their purest form, drawn straight from the wellspring. The spirit of punk is an uncompromising style of in-your-face musical amateurism, and when this ghost of rock & rollers past possesses a collection of songs, it's earth-shaking, life-changing stuff. Just ask the kids still listening to Never Mind The Bullocks or moshing to Clash City Rockers, showing Black Flag patches on their leathers, wearing a Minor Threat or Misfits t-shirt. It doesn't happen often, but when a band manages to capture that moment on disc, it's forever....

With ....And Out Come The Wolves, Rancid deliver their masterpiece. The popular Bay Area punkers, part of the same Gilmore Street scene that spawned Green Day and Offspring, have been quietly building a loyal audience with a pair of unrelenting, rootsy punk discs released by Epitaph. ...And Out Come The Wolves is destined to become their breakthrough album, not because of any trends or hype, but in spite of them. It's a damn solid collection of songs, a magnificent showcase for Tim Armstrong's socially conscious lyrics and the band's powerful hybrid of roots rock, hardcore punk and rhythmic ska. It's a high spirited group of songs, wonderfully paced and energetically enthusiastic from the opening riffs to the closing chords.

It's the songs that have connected the band with their growing audience, though, rollicking and freely anarchistic tunes that challenge the listener's conceptions of music unlike any rock since the Sex Pistols and the Clash. This is punk rock reborn, ....And Out Come The Wolves successfully bridging at three generations of punks. Vocalist Tim Armstrong's songs and stories speak to the listener because they can easily relate to the situations and emotions expressed. There's no cynical Seattle-styled teen angst to be found here, or even British punk nihilism, but rather a world-weary pragmatism that remains optimistic towards the future, nonetheless. Armstrong is a literary songwriter, a street corner poet couching his lyrics with a wisdom and intelligence that belie his relatively young age. Supported by a musical soundtrack that burns and roars like a mad dervish, Armstrong's words take on a powerful dimension, indeed.

I've listened to ...And Out Come The Wolves on the average of once a day for over three months now, and have yet to get sick of the disc. That's no faint praise, indeed, from a critic who has listened to thousands of albums over the past twenty years. The timeless quality that has infused ...And Out Come The Wolves ensures that I'll still be listening to it a decade from now. Rancid has created a true classic, an album that stands tall with the work of legends. When other critics argue the merits of the "band of the month" or moan and complain about the dreck being released these days, I just slap on Rancid and crank up the volume. Fuck 'em all – this is stone cold real rock & roll the way that it was meant to be.... (Epitaph Records)

(Click on the CD cover to buy ...And Out Come The Wolves from Amazon.com)