ALBUM REVIEW: Dead Fucking Last – Fuck It (SBÄM Records)
For a band who formed in 1991, Beverley Hills hardcore band DFL (Dead Fucking Last) don’t have a lot to show for a career spanning 35 years.
Okay, they split in 1999, and didn’t reunite until 2013, but other than their 2021 EP YRUDFL, fans have had only three albums and a small handful of singles to sate their appetite.
The earliest incarnation of DFL featured Ad-Rock and Mike D from Beastie Boys, and the current line-up still includes original members ‘Crazy’ Tom Davis on vocals and Monty Messex on guitar.
They’re back with a bang with nine new songs, produced with Fletcher Dragge of Pennywise, who guests on four tracks. It’s short and sweet, with two songs just passing the one-minute mark and none making it to two.
The title track was the first taste of new material, quietly slipped out on 2024 compilation The DFL Mix Tape. It kicks things off here, and it’s fast and raw, just the way hardcore should be.
Paddy Wagon powered by a buzzsaw guitar, has a change of pace mid-song, before speeding up again, and Watch Your Step has a throbbing bassline and huge riff as Davis demands in his rap-style delivery “Why’s everybody fucking with me, trying to have a good time, can’t you fucking see?”
Latest single Second Chances is one of DFL’s most reflective moments to date, thinking back to friends they have lost: “All the good ones/Are dead and gone/But you and me/Somehow held on”.
Bang, with its barked vocals, sounds like the ’80s hardcore that inspired DFL in the first place, while the call and response chorus marks out No U Don’t.
DFL show they don’t just do hard and fast with the slower Heavy is The Head, but crank it up again for the closing Tour Talk, whose repeated mantra of “die screaming” makes it feel like it’s 1982 all over again.
They’re hardly re-inventing the wheel here; the speed, energy and aggression of DFL’s earlier recordings remains, but their rawness is tempered by decades of experience and better production.
DFL hit the road this spring, including a run of shows alongside Pennywise, Circle Jerks and H2O. I’d reckon Songs from Fuck It should get the moshpit going just as much as the oldies. 7.5/10.
