Rockingham revisited...

About a week ago I wrote a review about the new Nerf Herder album 'Rockingham'.

Although I gave it a respectable 5 out of 7, I am ashamed and deserve a slap for doing so.

Having not been able to remove ANY of the songs from my head this week, and playing the album about three times through each day, I can now honestly say that it deserves a full 7 out of 7.

I originally said something that I need to clarify... I said in my original review:

"It's not their best album" which sounds a bit negative, and suggests it's not brilliant, but what I meant by this is that it's not my favourite Nerf Herder album, which is still true. However... I think I now love it just as much as my favourite Nerf Herder album 'Nerf Herder IV'.

In fact, having listened to Rockingham so much now, there's actually a lot of similarity between the two albums and if you squidged both together to make a mega album, it would indeed be MEGA!

That being said, Rockingham as a standalone album is now officially a classic Nerf album in my eyes (ears!).

There's only one song I'm not keen on on Rockingham and that's the track 'Jackie Got Married', but I only don't like it because I don't get it, and have no idea who Jackie is or what the song is about - I'm sure it's funny to Americans though (?!).

The opening track 'Portland' (about Portland, Oregon, funnily enough) is one of my favourites because I've been there and it seems accurate!

Each time I listen to the album, I end up with a new favourite song from it.

The thing I love about Nerf Herder is their signature sound, which although is pop-punk in it's essence, is laced with so many other styles or what I call Nerf-isms, such as the rock and sci-fi elements that are also thrown into a big blender with a generous helping of nerdy geeky fun. There's really no other band on the planet that can do what Nerf Herder does or sound how they sound, not without falling flat on their ass.

Lead singer and songwriter Parry Gripp is actually a living genius, and if you've never heard any Nerf Herder, I guarantee you've heard something he's written, like this for example (which I dare not press play on because it's an ear worm that will literally eat your brain for the rest of your life once you've heard it...)

By the way, if you dared to press play and listen... I'm sorry. But only a little bit.

Anyway, yeah, Rockingham = amazing, Nerf Herder = amazing.

That's about all I have to say.

That, and HURRY UP AND DO ANOTHER ALBUM! Oh, and come and play in the UK again before I die please.

Album review: Nerf Herder 'Rockingham'

I've been waiting for a new Nerf Herder album for what feels like forever.

But it's only actually been eight years. ONLY.

If you're not familiar with the work of the 90s nerd-core pop-punk band, or perhaps only know them from their theme song for Buffy the Vampire, then first of all slap yourself, and then go and listen to all of their albums in order - immediately.

Nerf Herder are one of my favourite bands of all time, and one of the first live bands I ever saw. I was lucky enough to chat with some of them after they supported No Use For A Name (another of my all-time favourite bands) in Portsmouth way back in 1999/2000 and I still have a ticket for that show with various band members squiggles on.

Anyway, yesterday saw the release of their fifth full length album, Rockingham.

This album was crowdfunded, and seems to have been a long time in the making. Alas, I was not one of the people to donate towards the album because I'm way too skint to do such things, and am a struggling artist myself, however, they'll get enough online plays and plugs from me to cover the cost of any donation I'd have given if I was able to.

So was it worth the wait?

Well... yes. I have to say straight off the bat that it's not their best album, but having only listened to it twice before writing this review, and blasting it as I write, I have to say it's a grower and one thing that is a good sign is that when I woke up this morning I had at least two hooks from the album running through my head. Having said that, it's not their worst album either, because... well... in my opinion they don't have a bad album, which is a big achievement in my book as most bands end up squirging out some shit at some point in their careers. Luckily, or perhaps cleverly in this case, Nerf Herder haven't done that yet. I'd say this album is as good as 2002s 'American Cheese' which admittedly took me a while to get used to as it seemed quite different to the the albums prior to this release, but was actually a nice development of their pop-punk sound, adding synths and keyboards, which then really came into their own on the Nerf Herder IV album.

I really like all of their previous work, and my favourite, and in my opinion their strongest album is the aforementioned Nerf Herder IV released in 2008. The songs on Rockingham are laced with Nerf Herder's typical catchy chorus lines and funny lyrics, but I feel that the subject matter of the new album falls slightly short of the mark in terms of the silliness and down right bizarreness of their previous stuff.

It almost shows a more grown up Nerf Herder, with slightly more rocky, slower numbers, like a middle-age man reminiscing about the old days. The band are all in their mid 40s now after all.

That being said, they still know how to make some great songs, with 'We Opened for Weezer' being one of my favourites from the album 
and this was one of the songs stuck in my brain this morning! There's plenty of geeky goodness which fans have come to expect from Nerf Herder on the Rockingham album, covering all the usual Sci-Fi bases, with Star Wars and Doctor Who references, and a song about blaming Bill Murray for a proper Ghostbusters 3 film never happening. Speaking of Ghostbusters, I'll write a seperate post about the new film and my views on it soon.

Anyway, Rockingham is over way too quickly, and maybe it's just because it's been so long a wait for new songs from Nerf Herder that I'm left wanting more and at the same time not feeling completely full up by what Rockingham has to offer (in a good way because I want more, MORE DAMMIT!) and I can only hope that this is the start of a pick up in momentum for the band and that this release is proactive and means that there is more to come and not something that was only done because the fans made them do it (if that makes sense?!).

A year or two ago I honestly thought I'd never get to see Nerf Herder at a show ever again, and I hope this fear can now be removed from my worried mind and that they'll finally come back to the UK before either I die, or one of them does. 2016 is being unrelenting in it's taking away of awesome people, so I hope both they and myself can dodge it's evil claws long enough to be able to be in the same venue as each other one more time!

Anyway, to sum up, Nerf Herder have so far done no wrong with their output, and although the new album is not an immediate classic, I know it's going to reveal more to my ears as I give it more listens, and if I can't shake the choruses from my brain for the next few days then I know it's earned it's place in my 'What My Ears Liked in 2016' playlist.

I'm giving Rockingham 5 out of 7. I don't care what anybody else thinks.

Listen to Rockingham by Nerf Herder on Spotify here: