Dag Nasty

For a band that doesn't exist beyond a recording project (in other words, no live support), Dag Nasty sure has a lot on the go. This album, their fifth overall and first in ten years, is just one part of the band's full-frontal summer assault on unsuspecting record buyers - they also have remastered versions of the classic Can I Say and Wig Out at Denko's with beefed-up sound and bonus tracks. Reuniting the Can I Say and Four on the Floor line-up, which includes Down By Law front-man Dave Smalley and Bad Religion lead guitarist Brian Baker, Minority of One finds the quartet putting their well-honed chops to good use on 11 tracks that not only recalls their glory days of 1986, when they were spitting out lovelorn anthems of youthful rage set to 220-beats-per-minute thrash, but adds a new level of maturity in the lyrics (and you would hope that to be the case 16 years later). Musically, the record is up to the exacting standards established through Baker's innovative and influential plucking and strumming style that made the band such an anomaly when they first emerged. It's a style that has been adopted by many latter-day mall punk bands but nobody does it like Baker. The question now becomes do we have to wait another ten years for the next record? Let's hope not.