Rad Payoff’s first full length album entitled The Good, The Rad & The Ugly will be released March 30th. There are three words to sum up the whole of the album and they are as follows: epic. as. fuck. With loads of previous band experience behind them, this four piece has come together to form something of a Chicago super group. Although the band is fronted by Jason Smith of Sass Dragons fame, Rad Payoff is able to cast off the punk confines and ventures into new musical territory. Smith’s vocals are as raw and urgent as ever. But, unlike with Sass Dragons, they are equally paralleled to the instrumental aspect of the band. It’s as if his vocals exist to compliment the music and not the other way around, as seen in most bands. Ryan Scaccia (bass) and Jon Olsen (guitar) seem almost to trade off the spotlight when it comes to amazing riffs; there is at least one in every song. Mike Oberlin (drums), also of Sass Dragons, acts as the glue that holds the whole together through solid and innovative drumming.
The album is littered with titles of satirical gold such as “New Bong Turks” and “Mini Raid the Panty Fridge” with lyrics to match. There is definitely humor laced throughout the album. Yet there seems to also be some sort of weird, off kilter level of maturity the band reaches as a whole which has not been previously seen in other projects. Although there are jam elements to Rad Payoff, they never cross the line into becoming a boring Phish-esque jam band at risk of losing the listener. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Having seen them perform many of these songs live before hearing them on the album, I can state that they exude just as much energy on The Good, The Rad & The Ugly as they do onstage. Nothing gets lost in the translation.
Release Show Write Up Via For The Love Of Punk
My cousin Mark told me about this little interaction between him and his 65-year-old mother when she got a medical marijuana card:
Mark: Hey Mom, it’s about time you got that herb card. You like it? You still like to smoke weed?
Mark’s Mom: It takes the edge out of buying weed – I’m over it.
RAD PAYOFF still likes to smoke weed, they’re not over it…go see them play the record release show for their debut LP The Good, The Rad and The Ugly with SWEET COBRA, MEAT WAVE and VELOCICOPTER on Sunday March 30 at the Empty Bottle, Chicago, Illinois.
Below you can read what the great Jim Miller (so you know that I didn’t actually write too much about the actual topic on hand) has to say about RAD PAYOFF:
RAD PAYOFF make extremely cynical, joyously engaging, no-frills indie punk. The Chicago quartet was formed in 2010 by friends Jason Smith and Jonathan Olson, (singer/songwriters for the eclectic, Dwarves-inspired SASS DRAGONS and equally-eclectic, folk-punk ensemble ELEPHANT GUN respectively.) With bassist Ryan Scaccia of WOODEN PLANES and drummer Mike Oberlin of TREASURE FLEET, the band creates intense, sophisticated rock that is as striking as it is manic.
They quietly released their first batch of songs as a limited demo cassette at the end 2010, with their first EP, “Amazing Blaze,” being released in the fall of 2012. While “Amazing Blaze” shared similarities to Smith’s previous efforts with SASS DRAGONS in terms of speed and lyrical wit, the four song EP was bitter, upset, and sick in the guts, eschewing much of (though not all of) the playfulness of Sass Dragons.
Their debut full length, The Good, The Rad and the Ugly, is the band at their loudest, their most technical and -easily- their most belligerent. Roughly averaging two minutes per song, RAD PAYOFF’s new LP is deep, mean-spirited hardcore. The band effortlessly mixes hostile post-hardcore, psychedelic noise and chugging Midwestern pop punk into songs destined to rattle away in your mind well after you’ve put the bong down.
The Good, The Rad and The Ugly follows up RAD PAYOFF’s 7-inch EP, Breakfast, available here.