Fat Ass – We Have Come For Your Mothers (CD)

In continuing with the beer-fueled dirty punk rock that Diaphragm Records is known for, Fat Ass comes out with their debut album, “We Have Come For Your Mothers.” Getting dirty with their bar chords, Fat Ass comes out with a set of vocals that is a distinct mixture of Tim Armstrong and the vocalist from Hilljack. Instead of taking up a standard and running it into the ground, like their label-mates A Planet For Texas, Fat Ass comes out with 13 cuts of pure fury only tied by the high energy of each track. Unlike a number of bar-punk acts, the recording on this disc is clean enough that the bass is almost always heard, chugging through with interesting rhythms. By far, the extreme shortness of each and every tracks creates the distinct feeling of not having enough material on this disc – while there are 13 tracks, each one of them only feels about two minutes long.

In calling forth the specters of a number of mid-1980s punk bands such as Black Flag and Dead Kennedys, Fat Ass successfully meshes the aforementioned bands with Matt Freeman-style bass lines to create something fairly forward-thinking. Never a band to not experiment, the high water mark of this disc comes in “Lonesome”, where a piano adds trills to the bass-lead rhythm of Skinny Jay. Slipping a little bit in the over-arching “Mommy You Stink”, having guitar adornments that sound wildly dissonant with the mass of the song, Fat Ass yet pushes the envelope to create the boogie-laden “Rub One Out.”

Even though I have no idea what Lonesome Sal and Erick Fromindiana are saying a majority of the time, this is no different than some of Aus Rotten or Good Riddance. While the guitar lines do end up starting to mesh together and sounding alike, the balls-fowardness of the CD is something to be applauded. The technical prowess of Lonesome and Erick in some of the solos (such as “104 Northeast Drove”) is something to behold, even if the typical desire of Fat Ass is to just blast forward with power chords. “Betty Ford” recalls the booze-fueled antics of Columbus-based Hilljack, but with more of a punk influence. “We Have Come For Your Mothers” is not a ground-breaking album in any sense, but if an individual is looking for simple, straightforward punk rock, than this album may just be for you.

Rating: 6.8/10

Top Tracks : 104 Northeast Drive, Indiana Weekend

Fat Ass – We Have Come For Your Mothers / 2003 Diaphragm Records / 13 Songs / http://www.diaphragmrecords.com / [email protected] / Released August 2003 / Reviewed 25 November 2003