NOFX announce new record 'Single Album' and share 'Linewleum'

NOFX have announced a new album called ‘Single Album’ – you can listen to its first track ‘Linewleum’, featuring Avenged Sevenfold, below.

The Los Angeles outfit’s fourteenth studio effort will arrive via Fat Mike’s label Fat Wreck Chords on February 26, following on from 2016’s ‘First Ditch Effort’.

Recorded at San Francisco’s Motor Studios with Bill Stevenson and Jason Livermore (Rise Against, Alkaline Trio, Teenage Bottlerocket), the 12-song record is described as “unpredictable” and the band’s “most personal” to-date.

“I have no idea why ‘Linoleum’ [released in 1994] is the NOFX song that is covered by so many bands while other NOFX songs get hardly any attention,” singer Fat Mike explained in a press release. “‘Linoleum’ wasn’t a single, it had no video, it got no radio play, and most importantly, it didn’t even have a chorus!!! All popular songs have choruses! WTF!

“So, one night I stayed up till 4:00 am checking out all the different versions on YouTube. Watching hundreds of bands from over 28 countries (mostly Indonesia) doing ‘Linoleum’ was a humbling experience for me. So I decided to write a song that was a shout out to all those people that learned those four chords and remembered the non-rhyming lyrics.”

Mike went on to describe ‘Linewleum’ as “a song about not playing a song that’s not a hit song with a video about other bands covering the song!”, adding: “This is why I love punk rock writing punk songs. Rules out the door!”

You can watch the video above.

The forthcoming ‘Single Album’ was originally set to be a double record, but the coronavirus pandemic changed NOFX’s plans (back in March, the group began sharing new songs for fans in lockdown).

“When you write a double album, you write differently,” Mike said. ​“I was writing really different songs, and some fun songs, but you have to make a double album interesting enough to listen to the whole way.

“I wanted to make a perfect double album, and I didn’t accomplish that. So I decided to just make a single album, hence the title.”

NOFX are set to perform at Slam Dunk Festival this summer, COVID restrictions permitting.