Fuck Art
The Dirty Nil
Fuck Art is the third studio album from Hamilton, Ontario rock trio The Dirty Nil — singer/guitarist Luke Bentham, drummer Kyle Fisher, and bassist Sam Tomlinson — released on January 1, 2021 via Dine Alone Records. Completed just as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, the album was deliberately conceived as an act of joyful, unself-conscious resistance: a rejection of the pressure of making art as a professional obligation and a full-throttle embrace of pure rock and roll pleasure. As Kerrang! described it, despite the resignation implied by its title, "its purpose — and the purpose of the band — is to offer up some joy," and the eleven-track record delivers exactly that with what Dine Alone Records called "classic-rock heroism, pop-punk horsepower, '80s indie scrappiness, '90s alterna-crunch, and speed-metal adrenalin." Thematically the album is as irreverent as its title suggests — Northern Transmissions noted musings on Elvis's final moments on the toilet, social media narcissism, crippling hangovers, bicycle theft, and musical jealousy — all delivered with the band's trademark mix of grit and good humor.
The album is widely considered the band's most commercially minded record, a fact that makes its defiantly profane title all the more characteristically Dirty Nil. Reddit commenters immediately noted that "calling their most commercial album yet 'Fuck Art' is a very Nil move." Standout tracks include "Doom Boy" — a pop-punk/thrash hybrid about listening to Slayer in your mom's Dodge Caravan that Loudwire named one of the best rock songs of 2020 — alongside "Done With Drugs," "Blunt Force Concussion," and "One More and the Bill." Exclaim! gave it 7/10, calling it "pure escapism" with "punched-up confidence and middle-finger swagger," while Upset Magazine rated it 4 out of 5 stars, praising "not a single mediocre song on the tracklist." It received a Metacritic score of 68 and AnyDecentMusic score of 7.1 — "generally favorable" reviews for a band that, by this point, had earned a devoted following on both sides of the border for their incendiary live shows and refusal to take themselves too seriously.
Fuck Art
The Dirty Nil
Fuck Art is the third studio album from Hamilton, Ontario rock trio The Dirty Nil — singer/guitarist Luke Bentham, drummer Kyle Fisher, and bassist Sam Tomlinson — released on January 1, 2021 via Dine Alone Records. Completed just as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, the album was deliberately conceived as an act of joyful, unself-conscious resistance: a rejection of the pressure of making art as a professional obligation and a full-throttle embrace of pure rock and roll pleasure. As Kerrang! described it, despite the resignation implied by its title, "its purpose — and the purpose of the band — is to offer up some joy," and the eleven-track record delivers exactly that with what Dine Alone Records called "classic-rock heroism, pop-punk horsepower, '80s indie scrappiness, '90s alterna-crunch, and speed-metal adrenalin." Thematically the album is as irreverent as its title suggests — Northern Transmissions noted musings on Elvis's final moments on the toilet, social media narcissism, crippling hangovers, bicycle theft, and musical jealousy — all delivered with the band's trademark mix of grit and good humor.
The album is widely considered the band's most commercially minded record, a fact that makes its defiantly profane title all the more characteristically Dirty Nil. Reddit commenters immediately noted that "calling their most commercial album yet 'Fuck Art' is a very Nil move." Standout tracks include "Doom Boy" — a pop-punk/thrash hybrid about listening to Slayer in your mom's Dodge Caravan that Loudwire named one of the best rock songs of 2020 — alongside "Done With Drugs," "Blunt Force Concussion," and "One More and the Bill." Exclaim! gave it 7/10, calling it "pure escapism" with "punched-up confidence and middle-finger swagger," while Upset Magazine rated it 4 out of 5 stars, praising "not a single mediocre song on the tracklist." It received a Metacritic score of 68 and AnyDecentMusic score of 7.1 — "generally favorable" reviews for a band that, by this point, had earned a devoted following on both sides of the border for their incendiary live shows and refusal to take themselves too seriously.