Oh lord. Two years ago, Fishbone released an EP through a collaboration with Fat Mike of NOFX and it was alright. Then in the spring of 2024, drummer John Steward, trumpeter/vocalist Walt Kibby and bassist/founding member Norwood Fisher departed the band. Subsequently, guitarist Mark Phillips and producer/bassist Aryon Day quit as well, leaving keyboardist/vocalist Chris Dowd and vocalist/saxophonist/lyricist Angelo Moore to rebuild the band from scratch in every possible way. New bandmates, new recording, new labels. 
Ultimately, some nineteen years after the release of their last full-length LP and three EP’s during that time frame, the time has come for a new era of Fishbone. The band debuted this era with the release of “Racist P.O.S.” about you know who with the orange glow and it’s good, a slamming indictment of what we’re dealing with in this cuckoo country of ours.
From the opening track, “Last Call In America,” featuring George Clinton, it’s clear the band are on a different path. The song is great, an introspective track that feels more like Sly than Funkadelic, but with the vocals still as strong as ever, the band sounding more confident than they have in years.
Some of the songs are slower than I would like, such as “Dog Eat Dog,” but Spacey T, who was the band’s guitarist in the early 2000s, is back and he hasn’t lost a step. Dowd knocks out a home run with “Secret Police,” just a barnburner of a track. It is nice to hear that the band have lost some of the instincts that nearly sunk them in the 2000s such as the songs that went nowhere and the lengthy jams that just sucked. Everything seems more streamlined and less catatonic and schizophrenic from the production to the band’s sound. Even a song like “Hellhounds On My Trail,” again written by Dowd, is miles ahead of what the band has been doing on their last few EPs.
Not everything lands like “Living In The Upside Down” and “All About Us,” but it’s nice to see these guys having fun and trying to plow ahead as best they can. The new guys (and Spacey) really help keep the music sounding fresh and modern; they won’t let the band sound like a relic. I was really on the fence about this record as I’ve been a big fan of the ’Bone since I was in high school and it was like a painful divorce in 2024, but the ’Bone have arisen and will continue to stay red hot.