Tuesday at Warehouse Live felt more like 1994 at your local skate park as punk-pioneers NOFX played its first live club show in Houston in over ten years.
Texas’ own The Latch Key Kids kicked off the show playing fast, melodic hardcore. The Flatliners, upstarts from Ontario, Canada, were next and maintained the high energy with their youthful exuberance and break-neck speed.
"This tour is great. Fat Mike (NOFX front man and Fat Wreck Chords owner) called us in his office in San Francisco. He told us he wanted us to go on tour with NOFX, which was awesome," Flatliners singer and guitar player Chris Cresswell told The Daily Cougar.
"No Use For a Name" followed, continuing the trend of Fat Wreck Chords-style skate-punk, playing what the band said was "98 percent old stuff."
Despite two previous sub par releases (and 2006’s Wolves in Wolves Clothing 2007’s They’ve Actually Gotten Worse Live), NOFX still knows how to put on an energetic set.
The band hit the stage and started with 5 minutes of banter and talk. If you ever wondered how bands like blink-182 and Sum 41 got their sense of humor and playing style, look no further than NOFX.
To further prove NOFX’s wide range of influence you could look to the side of the stage to see "Hot Topic goth-rock poster boys" Aiden, who played earlier that evening across town.
Fat Mike was quick to give the band his approval though they are "emo". Aiden lead-singer Wil Francis also sang along passionately with NOFX, proving that bands of all genres can get along.
After the initial chatter, they ripped into "Dinosaurs Will Die," followed by "Franco Un-American."
The band draws from a diverse crowd of skaters, college kids, hippies and older punk fans with their far left viewpoints and poignant, political songs.
Making the set list was what many fans consider their masterpiece, "The Decline". The song is 18-minutes in length, long for any genre, especially punk rock, and is an epic blitzkrieg of patented NOFX-style punk that tells the story of our declining civilization and the conditions in which make us human. When asked how he was voting in the upcoming election, Fat Mike told The Daily Cougar, in typical NOFX tongue-in-cheek fashion, "Republican."
