As
I’ve mentioned from the very beginning, the original Tony
Hawk’s Pro Skater games have a special place in my heart. They were my introduction
to the genre of punk rock, my original exposure to music that was fast,
energetic, and honest. The first installment in the game series ignited my love
affair with Goldfinger and ska-punk in general, while the sequel
acquainted me with the likes of punk legends Lagwagon and Bad Religion. For an eleven-year-old homeschooled dweeb living in semi-rural
Connecticut, these games were more than just entertainment: they were my
gateway drug into the world of alternative music.
Among
the more acclaimed names like Rage Against the Machine, Anthrax,
and Powerman 5000, there was also a lesser-known band on the soundtrack
of THPS 2: Millencolin, a European
group then just beginning to get recognition in the U.S. “No Cigar” was an instant
hit with me, its angsty no-fucks-given attitude arriving just as I was becoming
a teenager, and I was absolutely enamored. I would play the game for hours just
so I could learn the lyrics, all the while wishing I could get my hands on more.
Thus, when on my fourteenth birthday I was given a blank check of sorts for CDs
(the same haul that brought me Bender’s monumental debut), at the top of
the list was Millencolin’s Pennybridge
Pioneers, the parent record of “No Cigar” that came to define my standard
of punk rock for years to come.
From
my first spin of Pennybridge Pioneers,
I knew that I had found something worth cherishing. There is no lack of prowess
or personality on this record; every song, whether in major or minor key,
offers catchy melodies and precise instrumentation too juicy to ignore. The
sound is very reminiscent of So. Cal punk, which is no surprise given that Pioneers was recorded in Hollywood
and produced by punk icon Brett Gurewitz. Yet this Swedish quartet
layers in a large amount of catchy writing onto their music. Instead of shying
away from pop in favor of gritty punk, Millencolin dives right in, smashing
along a swing beat in “Fox” and chugging at a slow, danceable pace in “The
Mayfly.” Similarly, Nikola Sarcevic’s straining and raspy vocal lines seem to
rattle out pages of lyrics in seconds, all stuck to a delightfully fun melody.
While
pop is definitely the driving factor in Millencolin’s music, the vehicle is
their impeccable punk rock aesthetic. Fredric Larzon smashes his drums with
quick and precise strikes, bullying along “Highway Donkey” and “Duckpond” with
blurring cut beats. Guitarists Erik Ohlsson and Mathias Farm alternate their
rhythm and lead sections to create perfect complements to each other’s playing.
And at the center is Sarcevic’s rumbling bass, thumping down the foundation
beneath the band or growling in the spotlight in “Devil Me” and “Right About Now.”
On
Pennybridge Pioneers, Millencolin
takes their skate-punk roots and injects them with a healthy dose of pop, and
no song epitomizes this as well as “A-Ten.” Opening with a dolorous yet driving
guitar riff, Ohlsson and Farm weave their rhythm pieces together, enveloping
the entire spectrum of the instrument’s sound and spinning it into a
masterpiece. Nikola’s vocals are laden with emotion as he attempts to console a
friend through a loss, his mournful exclamation of “You wanna see her back again” wringing every ounce of feeling from the song. His melodies and the
instrumentation belie the song’s minor key, instead drawing hope and happiness
from a situation that would usually imply darkness. “A-Ten” drives its emotional
content home with relentless energy, a deft blend of mosh and melody that
invariably gets stuck in my head long after the song is done.
Undoubtedly,
Millencolin has their composition process down to a science, producing pieces
that feel as passionate as they sound. As is often the case with this style of
music, however, the lyrics on Pennybridge
Pioneers want for that same precision and attention to detail. Many of Sarcevic’s
lines feel sloppy, his images ill-defined. Lines like “to prevent something like a theft I got her locked around a tree” in “Fox” are laden with
unnecessary words, while the phrase “does never get a pass” in “The Ballad” doesn’t even make grammatical sense, perhaps a result of English being the second language choice for these Swedes. Still, I can’t stress
enough how absolutely sincere Nikola’s vocals feel, so that even his laziest
writing comes across with as much intensity as if he were shouting it right in
my face.
Although
most of the lyrical work on Pennybridge
Pioneers fails to invite anything more than a cursory read, one particular
piece manages to fully encapsulate and communicate its ideal with surprising
ease: “No Cigar,” the song that had me hooked from the very first slap of the
snare. Across a backdrop of searing skate punk, Sarcevic unravels line after
line of distilled teenaged angst and alienation. His verses clamber across the
various judgmental attitudes we all encounter in our youth: “Tell us where you’re from / what you want to become / and we’ll say if you’re OK,” or the
still resonating “We will shut you out / We’ll put you in doubt / If you think that you’re special.” In the face of this negativity, Nikola’s chorus
lines cast aside the darkness with a powerful mission statement as he shouts “I don’t care where I belong no more / What we share or not I will ignore / And I won’t waste my time fitting in / ‘Cause I don’t think contrast is a sin.” It
is this message of self-acceptance, defying expectations and norms in favor of
individuality, that slammed into my 12-year-old ears like a shotgun blast,
resonating fully with the budding angst that I was just getting to know. “No
Cigar” introduced me to both the sound and ethos of punk rock, values that
still reside at my core fifteen years later.
Pennybridge Pioneers is the record that “took [Millencolin] to the next level,” and while it may sound dramatic, in a lot of little
ways, it has changed my life too. It gave
me my first real taste of So. Cal punk sound (even if they weren’t from Cali),
a sound with which I would soon become obsessed. It provided me with the
material (and the guts) to start playing bass like a punk, as well as the
inspiration to take that bass work to a band setting. It inspired me not just
to value my own individuality, but to assert it, to push it through to the
forefront in all that I do. And though I can’t imagine it will have the same
life-shattering effect on you that it did on me, I urge you to give this record
a spin, because at its very worst, it’s still a damn good listen.
Tunes to Check Out:
1) No Cigar
2) Duckpond
3) A-Ten
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