OFF!, featuring such punk perennials as Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides), Steven McDonald (Redd Kross), Mario Rubalcaba (Earthless/Hot Snakes/Rocket From the Crypt) alongside the aforementioned Morris, interests me particular due to the nature of the genre. Punk has been around for a while, obviously, and theoretically there’s only so much that you can do with hammered out power chords, rapid fire drums and rumbling bass, but here Morris and co. keep it fresh. It might be due to the short run time(16 songs in 18 minutes), but we’ve at least got to give credit for such unleashing such visceral emotion on tracks like “Crawl”. And that voice... Morris’s unique howl isn’t nearly as harsh as my preconceived notions of hardcore. It’s emphatic in all the right, screechy in moments of vulnerability and just all around brilliant. At 55, his pipes and presence are still miles better than musicians half his age. As a whole these pipes get more of a workout than they did on the early Black Flag releases that Morris was a part of. ‘Killing Away’ is the case in point here; it’s just completely throat shredding.

The common outsider gripe about hardcore is that it “just all sounds the same, man”, and while that’s true to some degree, OFF! lighten it up in the right areas, build when necessary and unleash the freak-outs like “Broken” when the time is right. They’re just total professionals, everything comes out right despite a genre so often derided as homogenous. Guitarist Coates has worked with everyone from My Morning Jacket to Chris Cornell to The White Stripes and his experience shows here. Every blistering power chord seems so forceful, yet carefully placed under Morris’s rapid fire proselytizing.

I have no gripes about this release in the slightest. For the genre, First Four EPs, couldn’t be better executed. From the slightly more subdued pulse of “Now I’m Pissed” to the early Black Flag-isms of “Upside Down”, every song is intense and every one is worth your time. So although I can’t look at it from a purists perspective I can say that anyone looking to take a dip in the genre will not be disappointed. I’ve already begun my dig further into the history of Morris and of punk itself. All because of OFF!.