OFF!

Live in Portland (2016)

Daniel James

OFF! and opening bands Worms and Plague Vendor brought some raw pissed off hardcore punk to a Portland still simmering over the election on November 19. 

Worms was pretty impressive with growled vocals and chugging guitars. It was vaguely reminiscent of Aus Rotten. 

Plague Vendor did their Ebola sales pitch next. Alot of low dirge like vocals mixed with chaotic guitar riffs brought comparisons to Bauhaus and the Blood Brothers. 

OFF! was on next and last but not least. Punk founding father Keith Morris still soldiers on with a grudge against Greg Ginn the size of a freighter ship. They played "Over Our Heads," "I Don't Belong," and other favorites. Stage divers were shoved from the stage like British nobles walking a plank. The band stuck to their tried and true formula of super short songs driven by Dmitri Coates' classic punk riffs and Keith Morris' screaming. Keith still sounds fantastic and sounds almost identical to how he sounded on Nervous Breakdown. He is putting a lot of the younger guys to shame! The songs seemed to be split between the band's three albums, though the newer songs seemed to be played in a hyper fast fashion, which really made them seem all that much more loud and frantic. In between some of the songs, Keith would break into his lovable rants. He gave some rousing speeches of the coming plutocratic fascist dark times and the need for puns to be good to one another to get through them. Then they filmed a mockumentary and had us bio him during a speech. Would you expect less from the man who gave us Group Sex and Deny Everything?