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Five Iron Frenzy

May 16, 2007 | 7:09 pm | Tags: music

In this post I’m gonna introduce my favorite band—Five Iron Frenzy. Although the band doesn’t exist anymore, its members are still active in some other bands (I’ll tell you something about them in further blog posts). They made 9 full-length albums and a few 7″ vinyl singles and most of them are definitely excellent.

Many people refer to Five Iron Frenzy as “the first Christian ska band” but Five Iron Frenzy never wanted to be called ska. Nevertheless, they made several American Christians form ska bands like Bunch of Believers, BUCK Enterprises and maybe even The O.C. Supertones. These bands never became as popular as Five Iron Frenzy, though.

You may wonder why everyone who listened to some Five Iron Frenzy songs loves them that much. There’s nothing extremely unusual about their sound but the song lyrics are pretty clever, catchy and Christian guys love them for their religious meanings. Even tons of non-Christians including me enjoy those lyrics as well as hardcore Christians. The best thing about FIF was their friendly behavior, they never acted like hyper-turbo-stars and never took the band too seriously.

Here’s the list of FIF full-length albums:

• Upbeats and Beatdowns (1996): Five Iron Frenzy’s first large project. The sound is more ska than punk, the melodies are catchy and lyrics may be sometimes too edifying… but great beginning. Some songs are real legends these days, for instance “Combat Chuck” and “Where Zero Meets Fifteen”. The album also includes a modified version of the famous “Beautiful America” song, which is really fun to listen to, and a cover song called “Everywhere I Go” originally performed by Amy Grant. There’s also a music video for “A Flowery Song” available on YouTube. The CD cover is not as beautiful as the further ones but still a good one, its front side says “Fun for Kids of All Ages”, I’ve heard that this label made a few people buy the album when they saw it in a store.
• Our Newest Album Ever! (1997): This one is an excellent piece of work. The “Banner Year” song was actually the first FIF song I heard. Our Newest Album Ever’s sound becomes more perfect and most lyrics are great. Many listeners still keep referring to Reese Roper’s (Five Iron Frenzy vocalist) lost blue comb from the “Blue Comb ‘78″ song. According to Last.fm charts, this album contains Five Iron Frenzy’s most popular track called “Every New Day”. Someone has also uploaded a music video for “Handbook for the Sellout” to YouTube. The CD cover is illustrated by Douglas TenNapel (remember his beautiful video games like The Neverhood or Earthworm Jim series?), too bad there’s not much artwork in the inlay card.
• Quantity Is Job 1 (1998): This one is really fun! First 8 tracks are regular songs and the rest is a parody rock opera called “These Are Not My Pants”. Five Iron Frenzy made a silly song about pants and modified it in lots of genres, including country western, hip hop, cha cha and more. The hip hop one makes me laugh everytime I hear it, as most words got censored. All other songs are nice as well, there’s one called “The Untimely Death of Brad” and it’s about a 1998’s internet rumor about a death of Nathanael Dunham nicknamed Brad, Five Iron Frenzy’s trumpet player. The album includes one cover song as well, it’s “Sweet Talkin’ Woman” originally written by Electric Light Orchestra. A music video from this album (”All That Is Good”) is also available on YouTube. As for the CD cover, it’s illustrated by Doug TenNapel as well and it’s awesome—way better than the previous one. The inlay card is printed on a special paper and it’s full of great artwork.
• Proof That the Youth Are Revolting (1999): Five Iron Frenzy’s first live CD recorded in Cornerstone in 1999. Most songs are from their first 3 albums but there are 3 brand new ones that appeared on the All the Hype That Money Can Buy album later, including a Tom Jones cover called “It’s Not Unusual”. To be honest, this is the album I listen to the least often but still a good one. The cover design was done by Doug TenNapel as well but I liked it worse than the Quantity Is Job 1 artwork.
• All the Hype That Money Can Buy (2000): I find this album an average Five Iron Frenzy one… its sound is less tough than the previous one’s. The album features a very interesting track called “What’s Up”. It’s like 5 seconds long and just one device I’ve got at home was able to play it properly—an old hi-fi Philips CD player from 1988, which is pretty funny. The song is located at -5 seconds of the first track and the only program that was able to rip it was Exact Audio Copy (EAC). Anyway, my two favorite songs from this album are “All the Hype” and “You Probably Shouldn’t Move There”. “You Probably Shouldn’t Move There” makes fun of California and praises the life in Colorado (yes, Five Iron Frenzy was from Denver, Colorado). As for the CD cover, I was slightly disappointed when I first saw it. Compared to the last 3 Five Iron Frenzy covers, this one was absolutely the worst one. Maybe it’s because it wasn’t made by Doug TenNapel. The illustrations are basketball related and the inlay card is full of fictional “Fakers” basketball team pics, some of which are funny.
• Electric Boogaloo (2001): This is like a new generation of Five Iron Frenzy songs. All the ska sound has almost disappeared and the whole album sounds more like punk. Also the lyrics are not that much fun, except for the song called “Plan B”. What I always liked about Five Iron Frenzy and especially Reese Roper’s lyrics were nice Nintendo references like the one in this song. When it comes to the cover design, it’s very good. The front, inlay and back covers consist of nice grayscale photos. Just the CD itself looks pretty weird. It’s all yellow with a black childish sketch. Overall, Electric Boogaloo is a nice thing to listen to.
• Cheeses (2003): This album was supposed to be called “Cheeses… of Nazareth” but Five Iron Frenzy changed their minds before it got released, too bad. “Cheeses… of Nazareth” would be a lot more original title. If you’re not much of a Five Iron Frenzy fan, you won’t like it as much as I do. It’s just a collection of unreleased tracks, jokes, B-sides and it contains just 2 regular tracks. My favorite B-side track is one called “Rhubarb Pie”. The music is taken from All the Hype That Money Can Buy’s “Ugly Day” track but the lyrics are different and much more fun. It even made me ask my mom to make this pie according to a Wikipedia article (the U.S. style rhubarb pies are not very popular here in Europe) and it was delicious! The CD cover is nice as well but if you’re not a Five Iron Frenzy fan, don’t get this album.
• The End Is Near (2003): In 2003 Five Iron Frenzy announced that they would disband pretty soon. The End Is Near is their last studio record and professional audio reviewers usually consider it the best one. The sound is very similar to Electric Boogaloo’s sound. Song lyrics are all “farewell” based and full of band memories. The End Is Near is definitely an excellent job. The beautiful album cover was made by Douglas TenNapel again.
• The End Is Here (2004): The End Is Here is a special re-release of The End Is Near with a bonus live CD from Five Iron Frenzy’s last show and one bonus studio track. The cover contains a nice poster and a wonderful booklet with lyrics, thanks and awesome artwork by Doug TenNapel. Highly recommended!

Five Iron Frenzy is really worth listening to, give them a try. Too bad it’s almost impossible to buy their CDs for reasonable prices in European stores. I had to get them all from American eBay. Huh… I’m done blogging today. See you next time!