NOFX

NOFX emerged in 1983 as a durable Southern California punk outfit whose hook-driven songs and irreverent attitude set them apart early on. The group coalesced around vocalist and bassist Fat Mike, guitarist Eric Melvin, and drummer Erik Sandin. After issuing their first album, Liberal Animation, in 1988, the band deliberately sidestepped major-label deals and mainstream promotion throughout a career spanning multiple decades, during which they produced numerous full-length records. Among these were the gold-certified Punk in Drublic from 1994 and So Long and Thanks for All the Shoes from 1996, along with a variety of EPs and singles. Their fourteenth studio album, Single Album, appeared in 2021 and marked their ninth straight entry on the Billboard 200; Double Album followed the next year.

Originally a trio featuring Fat Mike (Mike Burkett), Eric Melvin, and Erik Sandin—also credited as Erik Ghint or Erik Shun—the band experienced frequent early lineup shifts. Sandin exited in 1985, succeeded briefly by Scott Sellers; during that interval NOFX cut two 7-inch EPs for Mystic, No F-X and So What If We're on Mystic? After Sellers departed, Scott Aldahl filled the drum chair for two weeks before Sandin returned. Vocalist Dave Allen joined in 1986 only to die soon afterward in a car crash. Later that year Dave Casillas came aboard as second guitarist while the group maintained an expanding and demanding tour schedule. Fat Mike’s own imprint, Fat Wreck Chords, released the EP The P.M.R.C. Can Suck on This in 1987. Casillas left in 1989 and Steve Kidwiller stepped in for the first Epitaph long-player, S&M Airlines; the band has stayed with Epitaph ever since, even while issuing several titles—including the 1995 live set I Heard They Suck Live—on Fat Wreck Chords, which evolved into a leading home for punk-revival acts.

Kidwiller, who had appeared on 1990’s Ribbed and the 1991 release of Liberal Animation (recorded three years earlier), exited in 1991. Aaron Abeyta then became the permanent second guitarist and trumpeter, adopting the name El Hefe. Pulled toward wider attention by the mid-nineties breakthroughs of labelmates Bad Religion and the Offspring, NOFX responded with 1992’s White Trash, Two Heebs and a Bean, an album that leaned further into anti-commercial territory, as illustrated by the single “Please Play This Song on the Radio,” which opens with an inviting melody before dissolving into a barrage of profanity. The El Hefe-era lineup reached a commercial peak with 1994’s Punk in Drublic, widely viewed as the band’s strongest work and later certified gold. Fat Wreck Chords continued to issue material through the nineties while Epitaph albums such as the grungier, slower-paced Heavy Petting Zoo (1996), the more up-tempo So Long & Thanks for All the Shoes (1997), and 2000’s Pump Up the Valuum appeared alongside the experimental Fat Wreck Chords EP The Decline, whose sole track ran eighteen minutes. The Surfer EP followed in spring 2001, its initial five-hundred copies pressed on colored vinyl.

In 2002 the band sifted through archives to assemble 45 or 46 Songs That Weren’t Good Enough to Go on Our Other Records, a collection containing forty-seven tracks; the sole new song, “Pimps and Hookers,” was tracked in a single day. Later that year BYO Records issued the NOFX/Rancid split BYO Split Series, Vol. 3, with each band covering six songs by the other. The four-song EP Regaining Unconsciousness surfaced in March 2003 as a preview for May’s The War on Errorism, a Fat Wreck Chords release filled with political commentary. True to their outspoken leftist stance, the members founded Punk Voter, an initiative aimed at mobilizing disaffected young people to vote George W. Bush out of office—an effort that persisted after Bush’s 2004 reelection.

On the musical front, NOFX next delivered the EP Never Trust a Hippy in March 2006, the full-length Wolf in Wolves’ Clothing a month later, and the live album They’ve Actually Gotten Worse Live! the following year. Their eleventh studio effort, Coaster, arrived in 2009 together with the Fuse series Backstage Passport, which documented the band’s 2008 international tour. In 2012 they presented a more self-aware collection on their twelfth studio album, Self Entitled. Several singles were later gathered on 2013’s Stoke Extinguisher, which added one new track and the B-sides from the prior year’s 7-inch releases. Throughout 2014 Fat Mike composed material for the punk-rock musical Home Street Home; he and the rest of NOFX collaborated with members of Alkaline Trio, Dance Hall Crashers, the Living End, and Tony Award-winning vocalist Lena Hall on the soundtrack, issued in early 2015 as the stage production neared completion.

The warts-and-all memoir The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories appeared in 2016 alongside news of the band’s thirteenth studio album, First Ditch Effort. Released that October, the record was introduced by the harder-edged single “Six Years on Dope,” which chronicled Fat Mike’s struggles with addiction and recovery. After drawing criticism for remarks concerning the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, NOFX were removed from festival bills and canceled their U.S. tour in 2018; their third live album, Ribbed: Live in a Dive, came out that August.

While isolating during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the group began releasing tracks intended for a fall album, among them topical numbers such as “Just the Flu,” “I Love You More Than I Hate Me,” and the characteristically irreverent “Thatcher Fucked the Kids.” The finished Single Album surfaced in January 2021, reaching number 26 on Billboard’s Independent Albums chart. That September the band disclosed plans to disband in 2023, coinciding with their fortieth anniversary. A year later they issued “Darby Crashing,” a reworked version of a song first heard on their 7-inch of the Month Club series, which led their 2022 full-length Double Album.