Enema Of The State

THE BEST thing one can say about Enema Of The State is that it’s only 35 minutes long. And if that sounds unduly harsh, trust me when I say that if there’s been a worse album released this year then I’ve yet to hear it.

The resolutely small-scale, self-consciously “zany” metal-lite purveyed by Blink-182 is the kind of stuff that was popularised when Rage Against The Machine lumbered into view six years ago, and that still goes down a bomb in places like Oregon and Colorado.

Musically, there’s nothing here that we haven’t already heard a million times before from eejits like Limp Bizkit; lyrically, the record is littered with the kind of puns and bon mots that make the average Green Day song look like the work of John Updike. The song titles alone – ‘Dysentery Gary’, ‘Going Away To College’, ‘Dumpweed’ – are medal-winningly puerile.

An album made by and for the people who sit in the public gallery of the swimming pool of life, Blink-182 is dull, ugly music without even puerile shock-value to recommend it. This stuff passes for punk rock in the States, y’know.