High energy teen punk album, that set the template for 90s punk-rock. Tricky album to recommend this one, as sonically it hasnt aged and sounds great and songs are really catchy but some of the lyrics havent aged well at all.
To the bands credit, they dont perform'songs I'm not a punk with the original lyrics.
This review on punknews pretty much sums up my thoughts.
I first got this album when I was 16 and absolutely loved it. It’s a fast and furious mix between pop-punk and hardcore that’s just dripping with teenage angst and which set the blueprint for a lot of bands to come. Blink-182 have basically spent their first fie albums trying to recreate Milo Goes to College.
But as I listen to it now in my 30’s I start to realize that this is one of the most offensive albums I’ve ever heard, and not in a Sex Pistols sense of challenging the morals of the powerful, but in a Ricky Gervais way of punching down on a lot of marginalized groups. Besides “I’m Not a Loser” being wildly homophobic, “Catalina” is one of the most misogynistic punk songs ever written, “Kabuki Girl” is shockingly racist, “Hope” is basically a proto-incel anthem, and “Bikeage” is unnecessarily mean and slut-shaming towards the song’s subject.
But it remains one of my all-time favorite albums, and of course I have to remind myself that it was written by a bunch of teenagers in 1982 who probably don’t feel the same way about a lot of things today in 2019 as they did back in 1982.
