Blotto is my absolute favorite band from Japan. Hands down the tightest outfit going right now. Gritty pop punk with enough hooks and melodies to keep you listening through the entire twenty-one tracks here and stoked that they’re still making music. There’s also a great and really noticeable progression from start to finish. They start off strong in the 2004-era songs and end fucking amazing with the songs from 2007. They’re so good that they break through my whole “I need to understand the lyrics so I can sing along despite the fact that everyone wishes I wouldn’t” deal. Some of them are super slurred and some of them are just plain broken English, and I couldn’t care less. This is a compilation of their singles and comp tracks, pretty much up to date if I’m not mistaken. It’s got everything up to their split with Drunken Boat that actually just came out. There is literally no way you could go wrong here. CD version is out now on Snuffy Smiles out of Japan (which I always thought was Snuffy Smile but everything I see now has the extra “s” at the end) and a vinyl version is coming out here in the states on A.D.D. Records. In closing, I’d like to wonder what the deal is with A.D.D.: the good label, and A.D.D.: the somewhat heinous street punk label, coexisting with the same name some how. Seems like the world is small enough that it would have come up before.
–Steve Stephenson (Snuffy Smiles/A.D.D.)