The Real McKenzies – Off The Leash

With six albums already credited to their name, The Real McKenzies know what they’re doing. However, unlikely many acts who stay together for this long, this Celtic punk outfit doesn’t constantly release the same record over and over again with different lyrics. Instead, each release sees the band progressing a bit while still maintaining their signature style and sound. Their seventh album, Off The Leash, is no different and any fan of the band beforehand will surely devour it with glee.

Merging equal parts punk and Celtic, Off The Leash is an energetic, raw, “traditional” record. With just as many guitar licks as there are bagpipe melodies, The Real McKenzies have written thirteen songs that would get any punk crowd moving in a pit and make any old Scot raise a pint and smile. To me, the band has always been a nice mix of Flogging Molly and The Dropkick Murphys. Taking the more traditional, slow elements of the former (with banjo, violin and extra percussion thrown in) and the more punk-oriented sound of the later, The Real McKenzies are able to pump a fiery spark of life into the Celtic instrumentality. Too Many Fingers stays in the straight forward punk rock mentality while Drink Some More is a perfect Irish drinking song. Having these mixtures of styles and sounds help keep the album – and the band’s overall sound – from becoming repetitive as each new song can contain a drastically different structure than the one beforehand.

Paul McKenzie’s accented vocals weave tales of drunken adventures, childhood mishaps, repeating patterns and life on the road; and like always it is those lyrics that help make the record because McKenzie is a story teller at heart. The Ballad of Greyfriars Bobby will bring a smile to the face of anyone who’s ever seen the famed statue in Edinburgh, The Lads Who Fought and Won is a tribute to soldiers of WW2 while Old Becomes New and Drink Some More are songs to sing with friends and will surely become live favorites. Each tells a unique story, be it about a dog destroying his lunch at school or going for a carefree drive down the autobahn, each song is a story within itself.

The only bump in the road comes halfway through on The Maple Trees Remember. The slower track is built with almost a country-twanged banjo melody and slows down the album. It disrupts the flow of the album and would be better suited capping off the album; kind of like the acoustic Guy on Stage. But by the time the power chord heavy My Mangy Hound comes on, you’ve forgotten all about it and once again happily downing a pint and singing a long.