I never thought that I’d hear anything from, or about, the Satanic Surfers again after they called it a day a decade or so ago. And sure as eggs are elliptically shaped and what goes up must come down, I never imagined that I’d be sitting here desperately trying to pick my jaw up off the floor after listening to, and having been blown away by, their “comeback” record. Back From Hell takes everything that the Surfers were, turns it up to eleven and snaps the dial off in a blur of frantic, infuriatingly catchy melodic punk rock that’ll blow the back of your head off and jump up and down on the scattered, splattered grey matter until there’s nothing left.

Like a circle pit hardened, steroid infused version of Lagwagon, the Satanic Surfers are the natural successors to RKL (and tip their baseball caps to Santa Barbara’s finest on Paying Tribute) picking up the baton that fate forced the LSD riddled Rich Kid to drop and running with it at warp speed. I shit you not people, this is the record that RKL should have made after Riches to Rags and is every bit as good as anything that Jason, Bomer, Lil Joe and Chris Rest ever released. And coming from someone who believes that the melodic punk rock sun rises and sets with Rock’n’Roll Nightmare, that should sort of tell you how incredible Back From Hell is. It’s only April, and every other band* out there is going to have to just accept that no matter what they release this year, it isn’t going to be even half as good as Back From Hell is. Welcome back fella’s… Tim Cundle

*Except for maybe Bad Religion. Because they’re Bad Religion.