The Menzingers

'Rented World' (album stream)

BY Gregory AdamsPublished Apr 16, 2014

Though Pennsylvania punk quartet the Menzingers' new, riff-rockin' Rented World LP is a week off from hitting the shelves, the band and Epitaph have brought out a full album stream a week ahead of its April 22 due date for fans that can't wait a minute more to hear the new tunes.

As previously reported, the album was recorded with Jonathan Low (Kurt Vile, the War on Drugs, the National) at Fishtown, PA's Miner Street Studio, with the group aiming for something different than their 2012 set On the Impossible Past.

As the band told Exclaim!, the album was crafted in the band's practice space, whereas older material had been written in a shared house, and the group looked to influences like Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer and more to help shape the dialled-up results.

"It was mostly just trying out new guitar stuff and we wrote songs that were centered around a guitar riff, and instead of just playing an acoustic guitar and writing lyrics over it, we said, 'Let's just crank the amps up and see what we can do,'" guitarist Greg Barnett had said.

In addition to previously previewed distortion-dusted, power chord-flinging rock tracks like "In Remission" and "I Don't Wanna Be an Asshole Anymore," the stream shows off crunchy hooks on "Bad Things" and palmed-muted pop punk riffs on "My Friend Kyle," but brings things down to a shush for "When You Died." You can hear those songs and more down below.

As previously reported, the Menzingers have a lot of touring ahead of them, including one date in Canada on June 3 at Toronto's Opera House. A full list of tour dates can be found here.

Read our recent interview with Barnett here.

Latest Coverage