NOFX Share 'Darby Crashing Your Party', Announce 'Double Album'

Legendary Californian punk rockers NOFX have shared a new single, Darby Crashing Your Party and announced a new album titled Double Album. 

Produced by fellow punk icon, the Descendents' drummer Bill Stevenson and Jason Livermore, Double Album is the follow-up to last year's full-length Single Album. 

The first taste of the record, Darby Crashing Your Party is a nod to late Germs vocalist Darby Crash and features one of Fat Mike's signature lead-bass lines and vocalisations, supported by a blend of instrumentation that is unmistakenly NOFX.

Originally intended to be released as a double album, the belated arrival of the back-half of the collection carries with it a sense of finality, with the band reportedly set to call it quits after 40 years in 2023. 

When asked why the band opted to embark on such an ambitious creative project, this far into their storied career, Fat Mike reflected

"I wish I knew, OK. I mean, we have a lot of records. I'm not sure how many, let's call it 15 with 10 more EPs and 65 7"s. I wanted to do a double album cuz there are no good ones out there. Pink Floyd's The Wall is about it. Quadrophenia is OK, I guess, if you're a Who fan. Definitely not [The Beatles'] White Album. I don't think anybody else has made good double albums. Certainly not Husker Du, Minutemen, or Smashing Pumpkins. 

"I really like Single Album a lot, but the songs on Double Album aren't quite up to scratch. All these songs were recorded at the same time, except this one was finished two years later. I think it's a very enjoyable album, and maybe our funniest. I think it is what a lot of our fans will want to hear and it's a great side three and four for a double album. I accomplished my goal of making a solid double-album, but it just took longer than I expected."

Double Album promises to remind both ardent fans and casual listeners that NOFX weren't born to follow trends. Indeed NOFX—Fat Mike, guitarists Eric Melvin and El Hefe, and drummer "Smelly" Eric Sandin—have carved their logo into the veneer of punk-rock culture for decades. With nearly 40 years in this circus, you'll meet people and do/see/conspire to get all the wildest shit done. Remember how one of the stipulations of the NOFX book Hepatitis Bathtub was that none of the band members could see what the other ones were writing about them? Well, this time, Mike got permission to blow up the foibles and peccadillos of people in song for maximum velocity and hilarity.

Track descriptions that are stickin' in our eye include Joanna Constant Teen, a 78-second tribute to the dominatrix that spent six weeks in Mike's NYC-based Airbnb during the production run of his musical, Home Street Home. (She just moved in and played with me every night. She'd be like, 'Mike; it's time to write another song. Get started, or you know what will happen!' That was really cool. Obviously, I didn't write that much.") and Fuck Day Six which is a story detailing the time Mike cleaned out in a rehab run by Buddhists, with plenty of name (and deuce) dropping. ("Anybody who has gotten off of opiates knows what 'day six' means.”).

Naturally, Mike has made a career drilling and riveting the word "self" into "self-deprecation," and he's sure as hell not going to stop now. With such future classics as Punk Rock Cliche, the song that got dropped off the blink-182 album California after the band found out that Skiba co-wrote it with Fatty (Although it was their favourite song) and the too-real, too-bittersweet, too-funny tracks My Favorite Enemy and Don't Count On Me, he's still ready to take a cream pie to the face, even if it has broken glass and sharpened nails in it.

"You have to laugh at everything," Mike reveals, "because the world is just falling apart and you have to have a good attitude not to take things seriously. So this is how I've always done it. I make people laugh every day. I usually do it in a self-deprecating way, it's just how I go through life: I have as much fun as I can. That's what life is—trying to find all the happiness you can. And spreading happiness. Which is what I feel like is supposed to be my job in life—spreading joy."  

Double Album will be released on Friday, December 2 via Fat Wreck Chords, which is the same day that they'll begin what looks to be their last Australian tour as part of the Good Things Festival.