Old School Classics: Dag Nasty "Four on the Floor" (1992)

Today I felt like searching the shelves of a record shop. So I found my self in Sonic Boom, a place that I haven't been to for a little more than 10 years. That's just crazy. What I found was an awesome hardcore / punk collection filled with old school goodies. When I saw Dag Nasty's Four on the Floor, I just knew I would be taking this album with me at home, forever mine now!

So Four on the Floor surely isn't Dag Nasty's most well known album; in fact, it just may be the most overlooked album of this band's celebrated career in emotive punk rock/HC. And that's what is so cool about gems like these, the fact that they somehow get forgotten in time and wait for you to discover them and enjoy the awesome music. I have already listened to it 3 times and I know this record will be played A LOT on my stereo this summer!

This piece of melodic punk rock history was released in 1992 by Epitaph during a time that Dave Smalley (vocals) had already formed Down By Law and was experincing quite a bit of success with them. Therefore, Four on the Floor was more like a Dag Nasty reunion, an ex-members-side project album. It was never promoted and Dag Nasty never toured on it. It was just the result of a bunch of Dag Nasty ex-members being in the same city during summer vacations. However, the songs are all great and carry the stamp of a Brett Gurewitz on production!

Four on the Floor is filled with the same awesome musicianship and heartfelt lyrics that always made Dag Nasty so special for hardcore and punk rock kids of all generations. Extremely poppy (yes!), very enegetic and very mid-tempo, it just plain rocks and delivers a breath of fresh air and positive hardcore energy some 19 years later! It is the heritage passed on by the late 80s Dischord bands (Dag Nasty being one of them), which was popularized even more in the early 90s by labels like Revelations Records and Equal Vision. This is the good stuff!

For all the above reasons, Four on the Floor is a definite piece of old school hardcore history that you should get into!