This isn't really a review so much as it is a recap of one of my favorite albums ever made. The album came out in a time where I was the age that I believe people develop the taste for music that they are going to enjoy for the rest of their lives. I strongly believe that adage is true - it certainly is for me.
There are only a few bands that are credited with the revival of popularity of punk rock and Rancid is one of them. The others are likely Bad Religion, Green Day, and The Offspring. I have problems with 2 of these bands and really love the other two.
Unlike the others, Rancid has a strong ska presence in their music minus the horns for the most part. I find ska less appealing because of the brass section (no offense to all you trombone players out there.) With the release of this album, which had 3 MTV videos, Rancid was walking a dangerous line of being considered "sellouts" and ostracizing their long-held fanbase. They did manage to avoid the moniker and they are one of the few popular punk acts during that time to manage this.
I would imagine that the bands that did "sell out" don't regret doing so because that normally just meant they were going to make more money. Take Green Day for example: They are largely considered the biggest sellouts of the entire punk genre, but they make a lot more money than the other guys so I would imagine they are pretty OK with the label.
Rancid has fantastic harmonies in their songs akin to NOFX despite the fact that the lead singer, Tim Armstrong, is not a good singer at all. He is helped out quite a lot by the 2 backup singers who actually have much more traditionally great singing voices - but if they sang lead it wouldn't be very punk-rock now would it? He has a unique rasp to his voice that suits the genre perfectly. The lyrics tend to not be stupid either, if you know what i mean.
One of the other benefits of ...and Out Come the Wolves is that it has 19 tracks on it. This was extremely rare back in the days when it seemed record companies were trying to release as few songs as possible per album. Nearly all the songs on this album are very good too. I have listened to this no less than a thousand times and it stays interesting to me.
The most widespread songs on the album are "Time Bomb," "Roots Radicals," and "Ruby Soho." The last song is the one that I think most people would be most familiar with and I still love this song. It's just so memorable.
Well I hope i have piqued your interest. I piqued my own. Time to dig into the archives and find all my 90's punk albums. :)