Get Fucked

Album review

When a punk band call their album Get Fucked, you pretty well know what you're in for, and Australia's the Chats are not here to defy expectations. On the 2017 EP Get This in Ya!! and the 2020 album High Risk Behaviour, the Chats demonstrated they were the latest in a long line of Antipodean punk bands who like their music fast, loud, and unpretentious, and 2022's Get Fucked changes their formula in no appreciable way. That said, this is also a fine example of the philosophy of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," and Get Fucked shows the Chats know what they do best and are here to deliver good obnoxious fun. They sing about booze ("I've Been Drunk in Every Pub in Brisbane"), cigarettes ("The Price of Smokes"), and fast cars ("6L GTR") with the enthusiasm of a true connoisseur, and their barrage of downstroked guitars, bubbling bass lines, and no-frills drumming is the ideal backdrop for their tales of bad behavior. This is the group's first album since the departure of original guitarist Josh Price, but new fret mangler Josh Hardy (who previously worked with the Unknowns) fills the position well, generating the right amount of buzzy racket while stopping for the occasional concise solo. Bassist and vocalist Eamon Sandwith and drummer Matt Boggis also bash out the rhythms with an admirable mix of slop and precision and a remarkable amount of energy. Is there anything here that thousands of bands haven't been doing since the Damned and the Saints established the template in the 1970s? No, not really, but the reason this sort of punk endures is when it's done right, it never fails to be fun and exciting, and the Chats absolutely do it right on Get Fucked. Open a beer, play this loud, and pogo yourself into bliss one more time -- that's just how the Chats would want it.
© Mark Deming /TiVo