Originally written by Doug Moore.
Sometimes I wonder how the fuck touring bands do it, and I wonder about bands like Lords in particular. This is a group who rarely headlines, who spends about 1/72 of their total tour time actually playing, and most of whose road stories seem to consist of band members quitting and main man Chris Owens punching people out (or both at the same time). S’all part of the great rock’n’roll road crucible for Lords…and holy shit, are they ever frustrated. Fuck All Y’all Motherfuckers, like Swords before it, is a wreckage-spewing tornado of SST-inspired punk nihilism, and Lords continue to be one of the very few modern hardcore bands that I give a fuck about.
Fortunately, Lords also still have a sense of humor, and the brilliantly-titled “This Is Not A Song, Dumb Ass” is probably the only intro track I’ve ever heard that I won’t skip every time I spin the album. From there on out (except for the equally entertaining and self-effacing “Intermission”), Fuck All Y’all Motherfuckers is a 100% drunken joyride. These songs are so brief and hypercompressed—like the least metal grindcore band ever—that attempting to treat them like individual entities seems a little silly. Instead, it’s better to let tracks like “Why I Don’t Give a Fuck,” “The Leginald of Reginald” and “Cause You All Are Fucked” wash over you as parts of a contiguous whole.
I think the best thing about this band is how absolutely bent and out-of-control they manage to make themselves sound. Vocalist/guitarist Owens and company seem completely unhinged as they stagger through seemingly accidental time-changes and pound into shrieking noise-riff denouements; one can virtually see chunks of debris coming loose from amps, drum kit, and even the studio walls themselves from the sheer, arbitrary causticity of some of these songs. Of course, every sour note, jangly chord and feedback squeal generated by these fellas is deliberate and even orchestrated, but that’s not the point. Unlike so many noisy-chaotic-hardcore bands, there’s nothing that sounds contrived or deliberate about Lords—unfiltered, sneering, punk rock disgust fuels these tracks. The intensity level is simply off the charts.
“It all looks like shit because it really is,” laments Owens on “Man, Everything Sucks.” While I’d be inclined to agree with him for the most part, I’d say that Lords are an exception. With Cursed sadly out of the picture and Converge treading water, Lords might well be the best hardcore band in the world. Let’s hope they can hold themselves together for a third album.
