This came out in 2000 — or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
“Don’t want to live forever,” hollers Almighty Trigger Happy vocalist Alan Nolan on the song No Luxury. Apparently, he and the rest of this veteran Canadian indie-punk outfit decided to take their own advice — they just broke up.
But on this final album, they go out not with a whimper but a bang. Not to mention a boom, a crash and more than a few screeches of feedback. I Hate Us is a blistering set of old-school punk rock piss and vinegar, from the stop-start polka-frenzy drums and buzzsaw guitars to the anarchic idealism of the lyrics to tunes like Bought To Be Sold and Reality Time Check. Still, they’re no two-dimensional outfit. After eight years together, they have the range and confidence to knock off a note-perfect cover of Fear’s Gimme Some Action and follow it with an instant-classic original like Everything Evil (Is Good Again), a motormouthed riff-rocker that closes the gap between Dead Kennedys and R.E.M.’s It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine). For The Almighty Trigger Happy, it actually is the end — but thanks to I Hate Us, you’ll feel fine.
