Review: Kill Lincoln - No Normal

This year I continued to get new ska music from Bad Time Records, including this album by Kill Lincoln whose frontman is the head of Bad Time Records. Modern ska has gone off in many directions. Some bands, like Calamatrix, have gone back to their reggae roots. Half Past Two, who has an album I’ll be writing about soon, has a third wave ska 1990s sound. Kill Lincoln is squarely in the ska-punk realm. It’s fast, it’s hard, and it’s loud. It took me a while to get into the sound, having discovered ska via the 1990s Christian ska bands The Orange County Supertones and Five Iron Frenzy and the secular band No Doubt. (Interestingly, FIF have gone the rock with horns route while No Doubt has gone a more reggae route)

Kill Lincoln’s previous album, Can’t Complain, came out in 2020 and definitely references a lot of the band’s issues with the state of America at that time. Four years later we find the band to be a bit more introspective (not that introspection was lacking in the previous album). This is kicked off right from the first song: I’m Fine (I Lied) with lyrics like “I said I’m fine/Tunrs out I lied/ To get by/ You said goodbye/ Turns out you lied/ But I don’t mind”. This is followed by Stinkbug with the following in the chorus: “I wont’ pretend/ My best intent is even making any different in the end/ Never mind this never ender / I surrender”.

While the overall feeling of the album has a bit of pessimism over it, the guitars and drums propel you through the songs and you somehow come out feeling that perhaps the singer will plow through it all and come out surviving at the end, if not thriving. And sometimes that has to be enough.

But the band is not afraid to have a lot of fun with the final track, No Normal. It’s full of tons of references to albums put out by other bands on the label. And, if the marketing emails are any indication, this label is thriving. Its normal stable of bands is putting out lots of albums and they are signing ska legends like Mustard Plug to put out new albums. For all that Mike is dealing with, things are going well for the ska and ska-punk world that he’s playing a part in.

I think if you’re going for some hard-hitting ska-punk, this is a pretty good album for you. It’s not the happy-go-lucky ska of the 90s, but I don’t feel so happy-go-lucky these days and sometimes I don’t need my music to lift me up, but rather to power me through me feelings.

• Ska
• Kill-Lincoln
• Bad-Time-Records