Rancid is the eponymous fifth studio album by the American punk rock

Punk rock

Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...

 band Rancid

Rancid (band)

Rancid is an American punk rock band formed in Berkeley, California in 1991. Founded by Tim Armstrong and Matt Freeman, both of whom previously played in the ska punk band Operation Ivy, Rancid is credited—along with Green Day and The Offspring—for reviving mainstream interest in punk rock in the...

. It is the second eponymous album and was released on August 1, 2000 through frontman Tim Armstrong

Tim Armstrong

Timothy Lockwood Armstrong is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, best known for his work with punk rock bands Rancid, Operation Ivy, Downfall, and the Transplants. He is also the owner and operator of Hellcat Records.-Personal life:Armstrong was born November 25, 1965 and was...

's label, Hellcat Records

Hellcat Records

Hellcat Records is an independent record label based in Los Angeles, California. The label, an off-shoot of Epitaph Records, was started as a partnership between Brett Gurewitz carp Bad Religion, the owner of Epitaph, and Tim Armstrong of Rancid, the latter of whom is generally responsible for...

. It was the band's first album released through Hellcat. It is Rancid's most hardcore

Hardcore punk

Hardcore punk is an underground music genre that originated in the late 1970s, following the mainstream success of punk rock. Hardcore is generally faster, thicker, and heavier than earlier punk rock. The origin of the term "hardcore punk" is uncertain. The Vancouver-based band D.O.A...

 offering to date, which was released as a follow-up to the more ska and reggae oriented Life Won't Wait

Life Won't Wait

Life Won't Wait is the fourth studio album by the American punk rock band Rancid. It was released on June 30, 1998 through Epitaph Records. It was released as the follow-up to ...And Out Come the Wolves .-Musical style and lyrics:...

. It spans 22 tracks in under 40 minutes, resulting in over 3/4 of the songs clocking at under 2 minutes. The Japanese version includes one bonus track, "Sick Sick World". Songs on the album make reference to famous gangster Al Capone

Al Capone

Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone was an American gangster who led a Prohibition-era crime syndicate. The Chicago Outfit, which subsequently became known as the "Capones", was dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor, and other illegal activities such as prostitution, in Chicago from the early...

, as well as Norse God Loki

Loki

In Norse mythology, Loki or Loke is a god or jötunn . Loki is the son of Fárbauti and Laufey, and the brother of Helblindi and Býleistr. By the jötunn Angrboða, Loki is the father of Hel, the wolf Fenrir, and the world serpent Jörmungandr. By his wife Sigyn, Loki is the father of Nari or Narfi...

, John Brown

John Brown (abolitionist)

John Brown was an American revolutionary abolitionist, who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in the...

, Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...

, Nelson Mandela, Charles Van Doren

Charles Van Doren

Charles Lincoln Van Doren is an American intellectual, writer, and editor who was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s...

, Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...

's Canterbury Tales and Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...

. Brett Gurewitz

Brett Gurewitz

Brett W. Gurewitz , nicknamed Mr. Brett, is the guitarist and a songwriter of Bad Religion. He is also the owner of the music label Epitaph Records and sister-labels ANTI-, Burning Heart Records, Fat Possum Records, and Hellcat Records...

 (Bad Religion

Bad Religion

Bad Religion is a punk rock band that formed in Los Angeles in 1979. Their current line-up consists of Greg Graffin , Brett Gurewitz , Jay Bentley , Greg Hetson , Brian Baker and Brooks Wackerman . Gurewitz is also the founder of the label Epitaph Records, which has released almost all of the...

) reunited with Rancid and became their producer for this album. It was 6 years since he co-produced the band's second album Let's Go (1994), although he engineered the band's third album, …And Out Come the Wolves (1995). Rancid and Gurewitz would continue their collaboration for their next three albums, Indestructible, Let the Dominoes Fall

Let the Dominoes Fall

Let the Dominoes Fall is the seventh studio album by the American punk rock band Rancid. It was released on June 2, 2009 through Hellcat Records...

and their upcoming album which is supposed to be released in 2012.

Reception

The album received mostly positive reviews, though it failed to meet the success of Rancid's three previous albums. Rick Anderson of Allmusic noted "After several fine, if rather derivative, albums of ska-inflected punk rock, and after years of being criticized for relying unduly on gestures lifted from the Clash, Rancid has come roaring out with the harshest and most consistent album of their career. It wouldn't be entirely accurate to say that they've left their influences behind; rather, they've integrated them more completely and created a sound that is completely satisfying without having to prove anything about its own originality. That sound ends up being something like a cross between the Clash circa 1978 and the hardcore punk of the early-'80s Los Angeles scene. "Rwanda" is a stutter-step anthem of sympathy for a devastated country; "Corruption" has an atonal power-chord progression and headlong tempo that Minor Threat would have killed for; and "Blackhawk Down" is built on a ridiculously catchy descending bassline and a distinctly Oi!-flavored singalong chorus. No ska, no reggae, no dub, just 22 tracks in 38 minutes with barely a pause between songs and high tempos all the way. If you're looking for artistic subtlety, go back to the catalog; if all you need is a half-hour of undiluted adrenaline, you've come to the right place."

Track listing

Personnel

• Tim Armstrong
  Tim Armstrong
  Timothy Lockwood Armstrong is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, best known for his work with punk rock bands Rancid, Operation Ivy, Downfall, and the Transplants. He is also the owner and operator of Hellcat Records.-Personal life:Armstrong was born November 25, 1965 and was...
  
   - lead vocals
  Singing
  Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
  
  , guitar
  Guitar
  The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
  
  
• Lars Frederiksen
  Lars Frederiksen
  Lars Erik Frederiksen is an American guitarist and vocalist, most notably for the punk rock band Rancid, and as the frontman of Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards and The Old Firm Casuals. He was also briefly a member of the UK Subs in 1991...
  
   - guitar, vocals
• Matt Freeman
  Matt Freeman
  Matthew "McCall" Freeman is an American musician. He is best known for his bass guitar work with the punk rock bands Operation Ivy, Rancid and as the frontman of Devil's Brigade.-Playing style:...
  
   - bass
  Bass guitar
  The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
  
  , vocals
• Brett Reed - drums
  Drum kit
  A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....