This review is part of a series looking back at significant albums on their anniversaries. Through the benefit of hindsight we will be viewing the album not just as it was released, but how it stands the test of time, as well as its place in the band’s discography and the genre in general.
Jade Tree Records – 25 September, 1995
The sound of Jersey basements that echo forever
I’ll be honest, I didn’t catch Hello Bastards right away. I was sixteen in ’98 when Lifetime and I crossed paths (and 11 more years from then before I saw them live). Jersey’s Best Dancers found me first and THAT record cracked my whole world open. From there I worked backwards, and suddenly Hello Bastards wasn’t just a record from three years earlier, it was the root system, the DNA of everything I was falling in love with.
Hearing it after Jersey’s Best Dancers was like discovering the blueprint’s rough draft. The urgency, the way Ari’s lyrics made heartbreak sound both raw and defiant, the mix of melody and hardcore grit; it all just clicked. Lifetime gave Jersey kids like me something different than what we got from the radio or Punk-O-Rama comps. This wasn’t Bon Jovi arena singalongs or even Springsteen’s highway poetry. This was the sound of firehouses, VFW halls, and New Brunswick basements where our scene was being built brick by brick.
What makes Hello Bastards so important, thirty years on, isn’t just how it sounded… It’s what it started. That record inspired kids all over Jersey to start bands of their own, and those bands carried the torch into the new millennium. Saves the Day? Midtown? The Early November? Thursday? There is a good chance that none of them happen without Lifetime showing that you could be melodic, honest, romantic and still punk as fuck. Even My Chemical Romance, who would go on to become one of the biggest bands in the world, carry a piece of Lifetime in their DNA.
The influence blossomed far beyond the Garden State borders. Pete Wentz (Fall Out Boy) has worn his love of Lifetime nearly as loudly as his love of Nightmare Before Christmas. Shit, the guy helped bring the band back to the stage and stereo by releasing the self-titled record on his Decaydance label in 2007. It is certainly a curios fact that it took a dude from the Windy City to help me catch Lifetime live. Rise Against and Silverstein have both released Lifetime covers, proving the sound and impact crossed borders into the Chicago hardcore scene and Canadian post-hardcore world. Lifetime’s punk, hardcore and emo influenced shaped the global sound as much as it did the Jersey scene.
By the late ’90s and early 2000s, what began in Jersey’s basements was being broadcast nationwide. Labels across the country wanted what we had because Jersey bands, ignited by the embers of Lifetime’s example were proud, not afraid, to be both gritty and heartfelt. That balance defined a whole era of punk, emo and hardcore in the 2000s.
Looking back, it still blows my mind. A scrappy New Brunswick band ended up changing the direction of American punk, and I was lucky enough to stumble onto it at the exact age when it could rewire me for life. Thirty years later, Hello Bastards still feels like a map of where the scene came from and a reminder of how far Jersey’s sound carried once the world finally started listening.
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/