Bottles & skulls hail from a northen Florida town and after after crossing the country with a self produced seven inch record, a couple of east coast tours, they settled into their new home of San Francisco. During their hard working tours, these four guys crashed onto stages with bands like Zen Guerilla, The Toilet Boys, Murder City Devils, Supersuckers, The Barfeeders and even NOFX, and now they are realeasing their first full length album: “Never Kiss the Wasp”.

It’s not easy to say how this band plays: they have a lot of influences, mostly I’d say rock n’ roll, punk’77, a lot of brutal and fast riffs and much more energy than you may expect. Probably the bands mentioned above, the ones with whom Bottles & Skulls toured - plus Rancid and a good dose of street punk style - describe some of the band’s influences.

“Never Kiss the Wasp” has ten tracks, of which, the last one is just a kind of phone call, so, not a real tune: the opening “The Mess” describes quite well the whole record, both musically and lyrically, it’s not a proper mess, but it’s not even so far away from that. Songs like “She Says Fuck Punk Rock”, “Nick Hole”, “Painkiller” and “Best Friends” are the most well done songs, with fast choruses and raw power.

If you are fans of some bands mentioned here ( even if you should forget NOFX style ), Bottles & Skulls may sound like the next big thing of the genre, but I doubt they will be appreaciated by the ones who don’t like punk rock n’ roll.