Epitaph, 18 Apr 2023
Last week, Rancid announced a new album called Tomorrow Never Comes. It’s their first full-length since 2017’s Trouble Maker, the most recent in a run of albums that never took hold for me. As a fan of their 90’s run, I sort of lost touch starting with Indestructible and honestly couldn’t even be bothered much to give …Honor Is All We Know or Trouble Maker a fair shake. What I heard never clicked. Maybe it’s the better album art, maybe it’s the recent re-connect between Tim Armstrong and Jesse Michaels (of Operation Ivy, Classics of Love, and Common Rider) with the Doom Regulator stuff, but the announcement got my attention this time round, and I decided to give the title track a listen.
“Tomorrow Never Comes” opens with a lot of energy – those fantastic bass lines, straight-ahead drums, and a guitar lead that slays all present. This is Rancid doing the gruff street punk thing and doing it pretty well – no ska touches whatsoever (sort of surprising considering the first song from Doom Regulator). Armstrong’s vocals on the verses sound terrific – he’s yelling with marble-mouthed enthusiasm. Lars Frederiksen sounds great on the bridge and then Matt Freeman offers a guttural “tomorrow” backed by gang vocals on each chorus. It’s the sort of stuff that I love hearing from Rancid, and the sort of excitement that seems to have been missing from recent music I’ve heard from the band. I’m not hear to announce a second coming or anything, but this gives me hope for the new album.
- Song Comes From: Tomorrow Never Comes
- Album Release Date: 02 Jun 2023
- Purchase/Pre-Order/Pre-Save: here
First Impressions are whiz-bang reviews of singles, 7″s, EPs, and LPs which are given a review after a single listen. This is a great way for TGEFM to showcase some of the releases which may not get a full review on their own.
Have an album or release you want reviewed? Send it to us HERE.
ryan is a reviewer and news editor for TGEFM. He’s very secretive, he might be an alien.
