When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro, as Hunter Thompson once noted. But I don’t think the Tricky-Dickish weirdness that Thompson beheld comes anywhere close to the national aneurysm we’re now in the midst of, ever since the Joe-the-Plumber set shat King Alpha Douche into the oval office. We’re way fucking beyond weird at this point. We now have a charmless reality TV oaf as president, equipped with little more than a clammy reptilian brain and a teenager’s addiction to Twitter. Moreover, the cancerous fat of his ego is so metastatic that even his ear holes are blubbered up to the point that he’s deaf to the world outside his own head. And Mammon only knows what sort of darkly Id-ish urges are ricocheting around inside that shut-off, tie-choked cranium. It might be naïve to think that such a simple folk art form as punk rock can trip up anything so determinedly brutish and feeding off the backed-up energy of so many constipated brains. But if you’re being attacked in your bathroom by a rabid raccoon, even a common toilet plunger can do the trick. And I think few would argue that punk’s golden era may have been when it stood up to the ‘80s reign of Reagan’s doddering cultural atavism. Personally, just seeing some of the record covers and flyers from those days, with snide cartoon drawings of a very prune-faced Reagan looking clueless, still warms my heart. Thanks to King Alpha Douche, punk may be on the brink of a new vituperative golden age. This record might just be the beautiful beginning of that. D.O.A. has taken their snarling anti-Reagan ditty from the ‘80s and spray painted it with a coat of putrid Rich Guy orange. As potent as ever. Let the Resistance begin! –Aphid Peewit (Sudden Death, suddendeath.com)