As I told someone the day after attending the concert, there’s a reason that humans eventually came upon the format for a church service that we currently have. There is something powerful about a room full of people all singing the same song, in one room, with one purpose. You can get a similar feeling at an arena (whether for sports or a concert), but there’s extra special connection when you’re shoulder to shoulder and jumping around together. (Not to mention the inherent trust in your fellow concert-goers when crowd surfing) This particular November has been a little hard for me. I can’t quite pinpoint the source of the general malaise, but I spent a good chunk of the month in a real funk. I was just starting to recover when I went to the concert and it just super-charged me. I think it really helps that ska, in general, is a positive force in the world. Many ska bands tend to support important causes, including participating in collaborative albums/concerts like Ska Against Racism. As I mentioned in my review of Kill Lincoln’s No Normal, the band grew on me and I enjoyed last year’s concert for their This is New Tone documentary so I definitely wanted to attend their release show.

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)