Photo by:
Does It Offend You, Yeah? has always been somewhat of an anomaly within the modern dance-punk scene.
The band’s first record, 2008’s You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into, featured a unique variety, but it was one that too often sounded contrived – the beats didn’t pulse enough to work as dance numbers, the guitars didn’t sparkle brilliantly enough to live up to the sound perfected by indie guitar-rock groups such as Bloc Party or Franz Ferdinand, and the instrumentals as a whole were a bit too restrained to appeal to listeners desiring a darker, more explosive sound.
Listeners got the sense that Does It Offend You, Yeah? was a band with both vision and potential, but was handicapped by the constraints of a genre that they never really occupied in the first place.
Three years later, the band has followed up (and followed through) with their second full-length album, entitled Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You, a viciously loud, sonically diverse record, in which Does It Offend You, Yeah? violently blends seemingly incompatible genres – including electronic, dance, punk, rock and hip-hop – into a cohesive 40-minute package.
This album’s release has seen Does It Offend You, Yeah? trade in their former major label for an independent label, and the move appears to have been a good one – the band’s animalistic energy and propensity for juxtaposing the disparate is dangerously infectious.
This diverse sound makes itself apparent from the very start. “The opener” begins with a soft acoustic guitar line over which lead singer James Rushent mournfully pines “I know the time you spent with me wasn’t easy.”
Not 30 seconds later, the song attacks the listener with a seemingly unending blast of synthetically-altered electro-punk, utilizing some of the loudest drums in recorded history.
“John Hurt” continues this explosive nature, with a quiet verse that gradually swells into an absolutely ferocious chorus; while “Wondering” features rapped verses and a chorus sampled from the House television theme song. It’s an odd combination that works.
Not every song contains such massive dynamic leaps, but the more steady songs remain just as invigorating. The third track, “Pull Out My Insides,” maintains a mid-level volume and functions as the album’s radio-friendly indie-pop number – it’s a refreshing breather after the hectic frenzy of the preceding tracks.
The album’s mission statement, it appears, can be found in “Wrestler,” an instrumental electronic number that samples an invigorating 1997 speech by professional wrestling promoter Paul Heyman. We hear him shout “This is the dance!” on multiple occasions, just before the song drops into an absolutely flawless dance-rock frenzy. It’s Does It Offend You, Yeah? at their most confident and energetic, and it should be a live favorite for years to come.
It is an unapalogetically loud and modern-sounding record that has the sound of the apocalypse. Whether this signifies the end of the world, the end of a relationship or the death of the genre of dance-punk, it will undoubtedly, for many, spur the start of an addiction.
