The Menzingers drop 8th album ‘Everything I Ever Saw’
The Pennsylvania punk band strike the perfect balance between being nostalgic and driving forward on their eighth album.
★★★★★
Photo: POND Creative
One day we’re going to stop getting new albums from The Menzingers. It’s a scary thought. The Menzingers are about as dependable as any other punk band of the past twenty years. You can always rely on them. Each record is guaranteed to feature the kind of sweaty sing-along anthems that are just made for being screamed aloud alongside strangers in clubs. With that being said, however, there was a small nagging feeling on their last record, 2023’s Some Of It Was True, that this was a band perhaps starting to run out of fresh ideas. Thankfully, on Everything I Ever Saw, the band sound reenergised, full of passion and have put together a collection of songs that sound absolutely vital and electric.
Perhaps this influx of intensity is fuelled by the changes in the band members’ personal lives since their last record. Singer and songwriter Greg Barnett got married and welcomed a child, whereas the band’s other frontman and songwriter, Tom May, has gotten divorced. It’s hard not to see the impact of these huge life events permeating throughout the songs on this record.
On the absolutely blistering album opener Chance Encounters, Barnett recalls how a random encounter with a stranger can pull you out of the doldrums of everyday depression and set you on a path through life you may never have expected.
It’s followed by probably my favourite song on the record, May’s Better Angels. This song is absolutely classic Menzingers. It rips at speed, has a gigantic chorus, excellent harmonies and gang vocals and an outro that is up there with some of the most catchy and memorable moments the band has ever had. As May declares on the outro that “some things just don’t make sense / But we still got fight in our fists”, it’s hard not to get absolutely pumped up. It sums up the defiant spirit and energy that May’s songs bring to the record, and his songs here are probably the strongest set he’s ever contributed to a Menzingers record.
The album follows the same pattern of leading with a Barnett song before following it up with a May song that often feels like it’s being sung in response. It’s an immersive and clever way of structuring the album and really helps make it feel more cohesive, as if these songs are just smaller parts of a bigger puzzle. Whereas May’s songs are defiant and righteous, Barnett’s songs are more reflective. They are about looking back on how you got to where you are, savouring that moment and using that nostalgic energy to drive forwards with excitement.
On When She Enters My Dreams, for example, the band throws in a lyrical reference to their classic early song Time Tables when Barnett sings about his partner appearing in his dreams like a vision. It’s not easy for a band to look back and reminisce with this much sincerity whilst also managing to sound so fresh and urgent. Songs like Romanticism and the title track strike that balance perfectly and sound as energised as the band has done in years.
The production on this album is fantastic too. The band has reunited with Will Yip, who they worked with on After The Party and Hello Exile. The songs simply sound huge. It’s still the core band at play, but the introduction of horns on songs like the thumping May-penned The Fool really helps the band sound massive and well-rounded. They aren’t changing the formula that makes them such a great band in the first place; they are merely just rounding it out with small flourishes and trying to be the absolute best and biggest version of themselves. When you combine that with a set of incredibly tight and cathartic songs, it really is something that’s hard not to get excited about.
On Everything I Ever Saw, The Menzingers have 360 vision. They can simultaneously look back and reflect whilst still maintaining the hunger and the drive to barrel forwards at full speed. It’s no coincidence that their seminal record After The Party turns ten this year. As that album asked “Where we gonna go now that our twenties are over?”, Everything I Ever Saw feels like the perfect response to that question ten years later. It finds the band feeling reflective, but instead of finding comfort in the nostalgia, they are using it to fuel themselves forward.
On the title track, the band sing that they “don’t wanna relive, they just wanna remember.” When all is said and done, The Menzingers have put together a mountain of memorable music. On Everything I Ever Saw, the band has added a whole boatload of memorable songs to that stacked back catalogue. I wouldn’t want to forget them either.
Everything I Ever Saw is out now via Epitaph.
