NOFX: A–H
When NOFX set out on their farewell tour back in 2024, the prevailing sentiment was that this was just another marketing stunt — exactly the kind of tongue-in-cheek antic Fat Mike and company would pull. After all, far bigger rock dinosaurs have played the “last tour ever” card, only to storm back a few years later for yet another “final” round. And yet, somewhere in the background hummed a faint, uneasy question tinged with sadness: what if this time it’s real?
So when word spread that the band was preparing not one but several releases — each sliced alphabetically into vinyl “scrolls”, the first instalment titled A–H — something flickered. Maybe, just maybe, there was still a bit of punk business as usual left in them. Unfortunately, what this first volume delivers doesn’t quite support that theory. Instead, it feels more like flipping through an old photo album — nostalgic snapshots that remind you how much everything has changed since the moment those memories were captured.
According to the official press release, the album contains a collection of rarities, demos, unreleased versions of NOFX songs — one for each letter of the alphabet — on limited edition coloured vinyl. With the track ‘Barcelona’ originally conceived 12 years ago, but stands as the newest — and last — NOFX song written and recorded after the band’s final shows.
Tracklist:
1. The Audition
2. Barcelona
3. Cigarette Girl
4. Don’t Count on Me (demo)
5. Everything in Moderation (especially moderation)
6. Fleas (live at MySpace)
7. Generation Z (demo)
8. Hardcore 84
Across this lineup we find intriguing artifacts from the band’s four-decade discography — moments that spark memories and call back to shared experiences spanning forty years. Forty years! That longevity may be the greatest achievement of this archival scroll: it lets us revisit early versions of songs we’ve long heard in their polished form, and now appreciate the raw, embryonic energy that first powered them. It invites us, through some space-time keyhole, to imagine an alternate universe where NOFX is once again a scruffy, unknown punk band recording its first demo in a garage — just pure, unfiltered adrenaline.
The undeniable centerpiece here is ‘Barcelona’ the only entirely unreleased track. It’s classic Fat Mike: brutally candid, possibly accusatory, aimed at someone whose identity we can only guess at. Is he airing out decades of internal band tension? Or is this yet another bit of self-directed irony, a trick he’s pulled many times before? The song never fully gives it away.
Another standout moment arrives at the end of ‘Generation Z’, in its demo form — a song we know from the band’s 13th studio album, ‘First Ditch Effort’. This earlier version is stripped-down and more philosophically pointed, zeroing in on the total erosion of meaning. In contrast, the album version stretches the final spoken-word piece into something more absurdist, more sarcastic and more Fat Mike. Both are worth hearing back-to-back — your own comparative analysis may reveal more than the band ever intended.
Taken as a whole, this collection opens a fragile little door, just a crack, but enough to let fans hope. Hope that more songs might surface. Hope that even demos, scraps or alternate takes could trickle out in the years to come. Because for anyone who has followed NOFX for any stretch of their forty-year sprint, hope is something we cling to willingly and without hesitation.
NOFX will release ‘A to H’ on December 5th 2025.