Duck and Cover
Mad Caddies
Fat Wreck - 1999(?)

by Josh 8Ball
28/11/2001

'Mad Caddies' first album 'Quality Soft-core' was pretty much 'reggae' compared to this one with more attention to melody than distortion. 'Duck and Cover' is more mainstream melodic hardcore punk/ska (tossers mouthful!) yeah a tad darker and heavier basically. You can hear bits of recent 'Bad Religion' and the like dropping through now and again. 'Medium unwell' is especially like this when chuck sings 'no slumber any more!'…. That is a plain as day 'Bad Religion' rip off from 'Slumber' off 'Stranger Than Fiction'! But I guess shit happens! That's the low point first.

Chuck really lets rip with the lyrics again in this album, pretty poetic, almost at times undecipherable but this keeps things interesting when u come to ur tenth or so listen of the album. I wouldn't say he displays as much vocal talent in this as with past releases but all the same hes a talented lad in my books with a malleable vocal style.

The horns…. well the horns…what can I say!!? ….me being a trumpet player this album blew me over! 'Road Rash' and 'Monkeys' r plain amazing songs taking my mind back to wasted times in music class at school. Its getting on the technical side but unlike 'Slayer' I can listen to it in the morning. The horns are the key to the dixieland and jazzy style that introduced in this album. Some of the riffs getting thrown around here r really inspirational, the highlight would be the lead break/solo on the trumpet in 'no hope'…why is this guy in a punk band and not an orchestra or something? And if any body knows what I'm talking about could somebody tell me how the fuck the trumpeter Co-ordinates using the mutes without fucking up in songs like 'monkeys'!!?! Bloody amazing!

The guitars and drums are steady but certainly not boring. It's nice to hear some REAL ska rhythmic patterns getting used not just non-stop off beat chords. By REAL ska rhythms I mean a few of the songs were using rhythms similar to that in 'my girl' by 'madness' (that's for u who don't listen to much old stuff!).

The sound production is fucking sweet, absolutely everything actually 'sounds' good, or even perfect, as you would hope on a pro recording. When I first herd the album though I wasn't too happy, being used to old Desmond Decker and Specials records I was becoming dismayed at the loss of spirit and intensity that came with a 'good' sounding ska record. That'd sound weird but I think having absolutely no mistakes can sometimes make music seem a little fictitious. But I got over that pretty quick and DAMN! I'll still take my hat off to Angus Cook, the fatty and Ryan Greene coz if my band had a cd id personally want my cd to sound like this one! 'Quality Soft Core' sounded a little weedy but hey we're not all made of money for pro recordings!!! And a lot of 'Less Than Jake' recordings seem to me to sound a little bit too heavy for their style. In this recording the horns sound brassy but not too distorted and the new choice of distortion on guitar reminds me of 'No Fun At All'/'Bad Religion' etc. so the whole lot sounds mint, it's a bang up job by the boys and that's great and everybody's happy! One of my favourite sounding CDs especially off fat!

So if u haven't herd this album u should really go listen to it and possibly buy it! If you've listened to this album and don't like it or even appreciate it then id feel safe in saying you're a bit of a dickhead! And if u actually read every word of this review you're a right fucking bored asshole aren't you! Because it was a heap of pretentious bullshit and I wouldn't be able to stand reading this crap for more than two seconds!

- Josh 8Ball