The Aquabats – Myths, Legends and Other Amazing Adventures Vol. 2
(Fearless/Horchata)

A new Aquabats album? Who’d a thunk it? Well in actual fact, I’m still not sure if this qualifies as a “new” album. It says right on the cover that it contains rareties, b-sides, demos and outtakes, but unlike most b-side collections the songs on this album are all high quality and all sound consistent, as if they were taken from the same recording session. Perhaps they were old songs that were reworked and re-recorded to create a new album? (The song The Wild Sea sounds like a remake of the song Chemical Bomb that appeared on their last album.)

Well, either way, I have nothing but praise for this cd.In the past I’ve complained that sometimes The Aquabats have a lot of joke songs on their albums that are funny to listen to once, but then they grow old real quick. This album has plenty of joke songs, but they are all really funny, and I can’t get enough of them.

Case in point: I Fell Asleep On My Arm, a hilarious Korn/Limp Bizkit spoof which has already started popping up on Napster labelled by smart asses as a “super rare” Korn track. This song had me in hysterics by the time they started imitating the ridiculous weird noises that Korn lead singer Jon makes. Not even Weird Al Yankovic could have pulled this off better.

Other “oddly amusing” songs include Worms Make Dirt, which sounds like it could have been on Bill Nye The Science Guy or a similar educational TV show, and the song Pool Party, in which the Aquabats pay homage to Rush’s Tom Sawyer. Most of the songs have strange little intros and outros too, just totally bizarre stuff. I mean, what’s with the whole Michael Jackson thing at the end of Pizza Day?? All I know is it makes me laugh…

The cool thing is, aside from the humour of the songs, the music is actually fun to listen to. People who didn’t like their last album because it had no ska on it will be pleased to find that Myths, Legends… has plenty of ska on it. Which is strange, what with ska backlash in full effect nowadays. However, they’ve mixed ska with the new wave synthesizer- based sound that they started experimenting with on their last album. It’s the perfect combination.

I gotta say, The Aquabats really impressed me with this one. From start to finish it is probably their most solid release to date, and unless you are a Korn fan you’ll be grinning from ear to ear the whole way through it. — Sean

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