Rancid Deliver Classic Punk Sounds at Breakneck Speed on ‘Tomorrow Never Comes’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

Rancid by Atiba Jefferson

Ten albums and 30 years into their career, Rancid is sticking with a formula they pretty much perfected two albums into it in the 1990s, down to using the same producer from their first great record, 1994’s Let’s Go. Why mess with a good thing?

The Northern California ska punks have always had nostalgia for the godfathers of Street Punk, drawing strong influences from British punk/oi greats from the ‘70s – from the Clash and Cock Sparrer to Sham 69 – and those influences can be heard all over their latest, Tomorrow Never Comes. Releasing on their long-time label, Epitaph, with the label’s owner and Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz back in the producer’s chair, their latest doesn’t deviate too far from what fans have come to expect from the band over the years. But it clearly doesn’t need to.

Rancid’s first new music since 2017, Tomorrow Never Comes explodes right out of the gate with the ferocious “Tomorrow Never Comes,” quickly dispelling any thoughts that the group had let rust settle in during their absence. It feels like the band is out to prove something across the 16 tracks here. While their last record naturally focused on politics, with Donald Trump being sworn into office and bringing with him years of vitriol and division, the latest doesn’t hue to any one specific theme. What does tie all of these songs together is the band’s knack for writing catchy hooks and additive singalong choruses, especially on songs like “Devil In Disguise,” “New American” and “Drop Dead Inn,” (one of their best songs in over a decade). The record manages to keep up the momentum to the very end closing on the brief but memorable “When the Smoke Clears”.

Despite coming in at 16 tracks – normally a bloated affair for an album – the band’s tendency to careen from one song to the next at breakneck speed, keeping most tracks to about two-and-a-half minutes allows Rancid to hold the listener’s attention until the very last distorted chord rings out. The band marked their return to the stage at last week’s Punk Rock Bowling festival in Vegas and will spend most of the summer playing a slew of punk and metal festivals across Europe before coming back to play shows in the U.S. this fall.  

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