The Orange County I’m familiar with has been irreversibly shaped by Hostage Records. In real life, OC is a sterile, be-stucco’d subdivision-entangled suburban nightmare that, by some weird wrinkle of time and space, is capable of continually producing some of the best melodic and true punk done by absolute fuckups. Fuckups who usually have served jail time, have a drug habit they’re currently in or eternally getting over, or who take great pride in perfecting their assholeishness between tattoo sessions. Among all this, great music explodes? Yeah. Believe it. The Have Nots are no exception. What’s surprising is how effortless and unaffected they sound, like they’ve been sitting in a time capsule made by Posh Boy for the past twenty-so years. The pacing on these two songs is almost at ballad speed, but the power and energy is unmistakable, like the bridging and build-up parts to Adolescents songs, the telekinetic ease of Crowd-like pop, all highlighting the lyrics, which tell stories of a wasteland. In such a barren environment, and among all the mistakes, durable music like this grows like weeds.
–todd (Hostage)