For intelligent Christian music fans the world over, November 2003 marked the end of an era. During that month, the infectiously zany and surprisingly witty ska band Five Iron Frenzy played its final concert in its hometown of Denver, Colorado. While I'm sure that their final tour was an emotional event for diehard fans, no one can say that the band didn't give them fair warning. The breakup was announced much earlier in the year, as an attempt to nip rumors in the bud, since they had previously had breakup gossip swirling about on the basis of songs like "Eulogy" and a silly Internet rumor that their trumpet player had shuffled off of this mortal coil. Five Iron Frenzy did the breakup thing right - they sensed that God was calling them on to other things, they disbanded on good terms, and they made every effort to give their fans a final memento worth treasuring.

That memento, entitled The End Is Here, is what I now hold in my hands. It's a 2-disc set, charitably priced as if it were a single disc, containing their final studio disc The End Is Near (previously only available at concerts on their final tour), as well as a recording of that final homecoming concert. While I never considered myself a hardcore fan of the band, I've got to admit, they've given us the goods and then some. When your final album was composed with the knowledge that it would be your swan song, you're bound to get a more concentrated effort on the part of every band member to make it memorable. 13 songs isn't a bad deal even for an in-between album. And upwards of 18 songs is nearly unheard of on most live CCM albums these days. It's as if the industry has forgotten how to give consumers a true glimpse of a full concert! But FIF was never a band who seemed to be incredibly concerned with the sensibilities of mainstream CCM. They were pretty popular from the get-go, having started out at the height of the ska craze, and while they were always a bit too "fringe" to be one of those artists who made it to a WoW compilation (especially after the public's interest in ska died down and FIF had to figure out creative ways to keep their style from getting old), I can't remember a time when they weren't highly respected by the industry's critics. Sure, these guys had a penchant for being silly. Humor tends to fit ska bands like a glove. But the humor also translated into unexpectedly clever and poignant words at times, making lead singer Reese Roper one of the most refreshing and underrated songwriters in the business. The rest of the band never slouched, either. While some of their excursions have been a bit too weird for my tastes, I've always respected their ability to throw genre conventions to the wind, incorporating elements of hardcore rock, reggae, 80's pop, Latin music, etc. into the music whenever it suited them - sometimes more than one of these would crop up in a song. And they employed running gags like no one else - something that might have gotten old for some folks, but that never ceased to make me chuckle, even when the attempts at being funny were really lame.

The band has definitely thrown down the gauntlet to Christian rock bands who will carry the torch now that they are gone. On the studio album, they've woven together driving rock music and extremely thoughtful lyrics (aside from a few stupid ones that are just for fun) to create a slightly off-kilter, but highly enjoyable collection of songs. And on the live album, they've delivered a somewhat sloppy, but fully immersing, concert experience that challenges other bands to get a little more into their live act instead of just playing the hits and going home. This magnum opus of sorts is a lot of ground to cover - so I'll start with the main draw to this collection - the studio disc - and then provide a general overview of the live disc, which is a bit long to go into tons of detail about.

DISC ONE

Cannonball
And everyone will say it's just an accident
Llike some mishap or a tragedy.
I think that failure has a purpose
And I don't believe it's chance if I fall...
The first new song comes blasting out of the speakers with loud guitars and stuttering horns - Five Iron Frenzy tends to prefer a running start on most of their albums. Reese Roper is in fine vocal form here, and while his voice can feel a bit abrasive to the unitiated, he adds a certain air of confidence to an upbeat and aggressive song about failure. Taking an academic lyrical approach (the guy was a physics major and there are some subtle references to kinematics hidden in the lyrics), he describes a spiritual transformation that has turned him from a timid person into a bold one who is not afraid to fail. The reason for this lack of fear is because he believes that it's better to try and fail than to not try and never get anywhere, and he believes that even his failings will be used for God's glory. It takes a few spins to really get the point of the song, and I'm not sure if I've entirely gotten it yet, but I like that it's presented in a way that keeps me digging for clues. The vocals do get a bit awkward at the end when Reese starts to shout the lyrics instead of singing them, but it's still a strong number to start off with.

At Least I'm Not Like All Those Other Old Guys
I'm watching MTV for fashion tips
So I can say that I saw it first
Backwards hat, tattoos, and goatee
Say I'm cool, just like Fred Durst...
Five Iron wouldn't quite be themselves without their silly songs, and while this little two-minute ditty definitely falls under that umbrella (what else would you expect from a song that starts off with a random quote about sandwiches?), it kind of makes a wry point as well. Here, Reese is basically making excuses for himself, how he can still rock out and be cool at age twenty-nine. Twenty-nine? Man, that's old for a rock singer! He kind of pokes fun at himself as he discusses his attempts to remain relevant and cool, but the joke here is really on the music industry, who has set this ridiculous standard that you're past your expiration date if you're over 25. Musically, the song is loosely based on punk, and of course peppered with fun horn parts, and it's over before you know it.

So Far, So Bad
The rhyme scheme to this song was mostly flawless
It might have made good poetry
It could have bridged the gap between the classes
And overthrown the bourgeoisie...
The third track provides one of the first hints of brilliance that would have only worked well on a band's last CD. Trombone player Dennis Culp actually handles the lead vocal for the verses, which is a nice change of pace since I can't recall hearing him sing lead since "Second Season" on the increasingly erroneously titled Our Newest Album Ever! Here, he basically goes off on a rant about how Five Iron Frenzy had this great song in the round that was going to tell it like it is and criticize the Christian music industry for all of its hypocrisy, but then they realized that nobody would sell their record if they did that, so they wrote this dumb song instead. Reese takes over for the chorus, which declares in a fit of frustration, "They won't play this song on the radio!" The bridge is absolutely hilarious, with Reese making up idiotic rhymes and finally declaring, "This song is STUPID!" You'll probably notice at this point that FIF's sound is more rock than ska, but thankfully the horns pop in at all the right moments, and guitarist Micah Ortega does enough low-end riffage to keep things interesting and catchy.

New Year's Eve
A year goes by and I'm staring at my watch again
And I dig deep this time, for something greater than I've ever been
Life to ancient wineskins...
This is one of the few songs on the record that my mind always seems to skip even though I do listen to it. It's a little more laid back, with a more cheerful horn part and a more reflective tone from Reese as he mulls over the regrets of a year gone by, and the genuine desire for a change when the clock strikes midnight. Maybe I've just heard too many songs on the subject. It's got some decent backup vocals on the chorus, and Reese's honesty about his insecurities is admirable, but for some reason I feel like it's too soon for a more serious song like this one. Oh well, it's certainly a much better song on the subject than Kutless's awful "Vow".

American Kryptonite
With passion, he searches
He'll make another purchase
Familiar, you know him
He's saying that you owe him...
It seems like FIF has to have at least one "hard" vocal part on every album, whether it be the tortured bridge of "Fistful of Sand", the barked verses of "The Day We Killed", or the seven-second grindcore send-up "When I Go Out". This song is pretty intense - Andrew Verdecchio's drums are especially punchy throughout and Keith hammers on a one-note riff at the beginning of the song, but Reese takes on a very bitter and abrasive vocal tone throughout. But the song is still very tuneful - Five Iron Frenzy has this odd way of inserting an extremely poppy and catchy chorus into the most stylistically varied songs. The lyrics here are a not-so-subtle attack on the consumerism that has overcome modern-day Christians, basically equating our need to constantly buy new things with spiritual kryptonite that whittles away all traces of spiritual maturity. The song's most intense moment comes when Reese whispers a memorable quote about how people are now serving their new God - themselves! Then he breaks into an absolutely blood-curdling refrain of "BUY!!! TAKE!!! BREAK!!! THROW IT AWAY!!!" that repeats several times before returning to the final chorus. It's positively jarring at first, and will probably be off-putting to those who aren't used to Reese's voice, but keep in mind that he used to be in a hardcore band called Exhumator before the era of FIF. He knows what he's doing.

It Was Beautiful
Thanks for the songs, these seven friends and eight good years
It is You that made them sweet...
This celebratory tune, written by Dennis, actually has a very similar tune to "New Year's Eve" - it's just a tad happier in tone. It's basically a "thank you" to the fans who have invited them to play in venues across the nation, and to God for all of the years of friendship and mayhem they've experienced together. Reese sings about various locales they've visited and memories of shows they've played, and they infuse their gratitude with a worshipful attitude here. It's a fitting recognition of all that will remain important to the band members as they part ways.

Wizard Needs Food, Badly
In the hunter-gatherer societies, I'd bring home the bacon
Public thought says men should try and be tame, stirred but not shaken...
Abso-freakin-lutely HILARIOUS. Man, I love this song. From the opening sound bite, which is stolen from the old video game Gauntlet, and the muted, whiny horn parts that sound like they were recorded about 60 years ago, you can tell that this is going to be a silly song of the highest order. Reese is essentially going for a sympathy play here, trying to explain the difference between men and women to a new wife who apparently just wants him to act civilized (i.e. more like a woman). He makes the best defense he can for motorcycles and video games and so forth, basically telling her that boys need their chance to be boys. I love the bridge, where all seven guys in the band get a spoken part, culminating in Reese's desperate cry, "But you should see that THE WIZARD NEEDS FOOD!" I have to wonder what the band's lone female member, sax player Leanor Ortega (who ironically goes by a guy's name, "Jeff the Girl"), thought of this one.

Farewell to Arms
You hate Christianity, but love your animosity
It's the church who's getting rotten, yet it's Christ that you've forgotten...
This stomping anthem, played in 6/8 time, features a pretty slick guitar intro, but starts to unravel as soon as the drums kick in - I don't know, something about the way the rhythm is hammered out, combined with Reese's snarling at a person who hates Christians, is a bit unnerving. Perhaps he's trying to imitate the obnoxious protestor that he's addressing, but this is one point where I have a harder time handling his abrasive vocal approach. What he's saying in the lyrics is good - basically, he's trying to get the person to understand that the teachings of Jesus Christ shouldn't be judged on the basis of how Christians have carried them out poorly. So this song gets points for its message, but the musical approach... eh, I could take it or leave it.

See the Flames Begin to Crawl
I've got notebooks full of misshapen words
I'll never speak them anymore
Ten years from now, you won't know my name
Throw the microphone down on the floor...
Here's another amusing song, this time taking on a ridiculous, white-boy reggae type of sound. Reese's attempt at imitating a rasta vocal is just plain hilarious, even if the song starts to lose momentum when he starts to sing a fairly easy-going emlody in his normal tone of voice. As Reese says on the live CD, this is a song about "lighting stuff on fire and quitting". Maybe it's a portrait of what would have happened to the band if they had tried to continue on endlessly despite their members being called to different things. It would have crashed and burned, essentially. It's a subtle reminder to the fans that they can't demand for FIF to stick around forever. Leave it to FIF to communicate this in one of their wackier songs!

Anchors Away
The advertising dollars buy the right to stifle antonyms
To sterilize the truth with fiction, so we can sing their corporate hymns...
While this tune is more of a dark, aggressive rock song, it was one of the few that I didn't really notice at first, probably due to its more straightforward rhythm and melody, and it's reuse of the phrase "Goodbye, goodnight" (which was used, albeit flipped around, in "See the Flames Begin to Crawl"). It's actually a biting piece of commentary when you take the time to dig into it - Reese is speaking out against the one-sidedness of the media, and I can't help but wonder if his criticism has anything to do with 9/11 and the war in Iraq. I've heard people say before that not everything is as you see it on CNN, and this seems to be Reese's attitude, taken a step further as he insinuates that "they're buying you". Basically, they're scaring you into continuing to tune in. I love his chilling spoken word vocal in the middle of the song. "Are you afraid yet? You should be!" I mean, how many times have you seen some news teaser like, "The latest on a horrific new disease that could kill your child in five minutes! Film at 11." I don't know if this song would have made the cut if not for this being their final album, and therefore not as much of a risk to the band's future well-being, but anyway, well done, guys.

Something Like Laughter
Searching for more than mere lies disguised as dogma
Tired eyes tend to wander, seek the light...
As the members of FIF have grown as artists and performers, they've started to branch out into side projects - Reese and two of the other guys have Brave Saint Saturn, Dennis has some worship albums out, and Leanor is a budding poet. As far as I know, this is the only song she ever penned for FIF, and it does sound a bit like a poem set to music. It's bit odd to hear the fast-paced syncopated rhythm over which Reese barrels through her lyrics - I think it actually takes a lot away from Leanor's story of a girl who is trying to find faith despite oppressive circumstances. For some reason, the fast and overly busy musical mood reminds me of a news broadcast. Maybe it would've fit better with the previous song, eh?

That's How the Story Ends
I heard a voice that chilled my spine
I saw what I could not define
A sight I never could contrive
There stood Brad at last, alive...
The band takes advantage of their punk influence here to create a fast-paced crowd-pleaser of a song, one that basically sets out to explain some of their more infamous silly songs. Remember how they kept losing Micah? Well, he came back, and he found Reese's comb. Reese's spoken reaction to that is priceless, and on the song goes, tying together some of Five Iron's most random jokes. It might be one of the only silly songs to actually make you feel a tinge of sadness, because when it's over, you know that the band's silly side has been witnessed for the last time, and all of the stories have been explained and now it's time to roll the credits. Aw, man!

On Distant Shores
I have leveled lies so deep, the truth may never find
And inside my faithless heart, I stole things never mine...
If this strangely island-inflected little number sounds at all familiar, you're not hearing things. Five Iron is well aware of the popularity of one of their most spiritually uplifting songs, "Every New Day" - the song that they always close their concerts with. By syncopating the rhythm a bit to give it sort of an island feel, they've essentially written a sequel to that song, in which Reese describes his ongoing journey of faith, pulling no punches as he describes his own hypocrisy and failure to live up to the standard God has set out for him. It's one of those songs that takes its time to build, allowing the listener to feel the struggle along with him, and the frenzy increases until Reese is practically screaming, at which point the song changes key and the band reprises the end of "Every New Day". It's a beautiful moment, and while some might criticize the band for re-using an old song, I think it makes for a perfect retrospective, a look back on how far they've come and how the prayer at the end of "Every New Day" is still as relevant and necessary as ever.

The Cross of St. Andrew
When all of your principles were fashioned
You thought that your new rules made you new
But maybe those X's on your hands are what's killing you...
The original version of The End Is Near actually ended with "On Distant Shores", so I've honestly got mixed feelings about throwing a bonus track onto the final retail version. For one thing, it kind of shortchanges fans who bought the album the first time (though you could argue that they're getting it again as a bonus for buying the live album, which I guess is fair), and it also kind of blunts the climactic effect of what was supposed to be Five Iron's last hurrah. This bouncy little number about shackling oneself with rules and regulations and missing the point of God's grace has the best of intentions, but I can't shake the feeling that it's a bit of an afterthought at this point, a new song that was written too late for inclusion on the jokes and B-sides collection Cheeses of Nazareth or on a proper album. It ends rather abruptly and I guess if they had to add it in, it might have worked better in the middle of the album somewhere.

That's not the end of it, though. Track 14 of the CD actually runs over thirty minutes long, and it's mostly comprised of a hidden track featuring snippets that were cut out of the live concert recording on the other disc - "deleted scenes" if you will. It's actually a pretty interesting listen, albeit somewhat tedious, since it's mostly Reese talking to the crowd about random things in between songs. Some of it is just thank yous to fans, some of it is mindless farting around, and if you're patient enough, you'll get renditions of "Pootermobile" and "Mayonnaise Taco Monday", two of the gag tracks from Cheeses that the band tries to pass off as serious songs when introducing them. Following all of this is the original hidden track from The End Is Near, which is mostly pointless laughter after one of the guys suggest that they should "play some more songs". For a band capable of coming up with a lot of memorable randomness, it's a bit of a disappointing hidden track, but whatever.

DISC TWO

There's just too much good stuff on the second disc for me to explore it in great detail. Suffice to say, the band gave their all to make their final performance memorable, even if they decided to be lazy and not change up the setlist from the rest of the tour. It's forgivable; only hardcore fans would see a band twice on the same tour anyway, and they probably didn't care what the band played as long as they hit a good percentage of the classics. What you get here is an extraordinary sampling of some of FIF's best played fast, loud, and a little sloppy, but with a definite sense of life and joy and just a touch of insanity. The band covers the bases here, hitting all of their albums, from songs like "Old West" and "Where 0 Meets 15" that I'm not even terribly familiar with, up through their most recent disc, which is represented by "Cannonball", "At Least I'm Not Like All Those Other Old Guys", "See the Flames Begin to Crawl", and "American Kryptonite". Some tracks will be a repeat for fans who bought Proof That the Youth Are Revolting! a few years back, but quite frankly, Leanor can scream the lyrics to "When I Go Out" as much as she wants and I'll never cease to be amused by it. Segues between songs are tight in several places, and when the band stops to talk in between, it's usually either amusing, touching, or both, not just a waste of time like it seems to be on so many live albums. There's even a medley of some of their best songs, which saves them a little bit of time while making sure to cover classic like "Suckerpunch" and "Dandelions". Perhaps the most surprising inclusion is "Vultures", an 80's pop knockoff that finds Reese acting like he's a member of Devo or something. It just never struck me as the kind of song that they'd be able to pull off live, but lo and behold, they did it. A good portion of the songs are silly (and of course they've gotta play their California-sucks-Colorado-rules anthem "You Probably Shouldn't Move Here"), but the band does make sure to bring the show to a climax with three of their most serious and hopeful songs - "A New Hope", "World Without End" (having a live audience to sing along to the acapella ending is priceless there!), and "Every New Day". There's some more acapella singing after "Every New Day", as Reese bids the crowd a solemn farewell and leads them in singing "Amazing Grace" and "Silent Night" - it's recorded at a frustratingly low volume on the CD, so you'll have to turn it up a bit. All in all, this disc a heck of a time capsule, and it makes me glad that I went with my instinct to catch the band on the Electric Youth Tour in 2001. I may have never gotten another chance.

The End Is Here is a fine package. Sure, it has its flaws, and some of those are probably just perceived flaws on my part since I'm not into some of the more "fringe" elements of FIF's music, but all quibbles aside, I can't imagine them giving their fans a much better farewell than this. If only all bands had the forethought and patience to plan such a going-away party, then the world would be a better place.

ALBUM WORTH:

DISC ONE
Cannonball $1.50
At Least I'm Not Like All Those Other Old Guys $1.50
So Far, So Bad $2
New Year's Eve $.50
American Kryptonite $1.50
It Was Beautiful $1.50
Wizard Needs Food, Badly $2
Farewell to Arms $.50
See the Flames Begin to Crawl $1
Anchors Away $1
Something Like Laughter $.50
That's How the Story Ends $1.50
On Distant Shores $2
The Cross of St. Andrew $.50
(Bonus Material) $.50

DISC TWO
Intro $0
Old West $1
Handbook for the Sellout $1.50
Where 0 Meets 15 $1
Cannonball $1.50
Blue Comb '78 $1.50
At Least I'm Not Like All Those Other Old Guys $1.50
You Probably Shouldn't Move Here $1.50
O Canada $1.50
When I Go Out $1
See the Flames Begin to Crawl $1
Vultures $1.50
You Can't Handle This $1.50
American Kryptonite $2
The Phantom Mullet $2
Medley $1.50
A New Hope $1
World Without End $2
Every New Day/Amazing Grace/Silent Night $2

TOTAL WORTH: $44.50

CONCLUSION: I don't think I need to stress this any more than I have - this thing is totally worth it, especially if you're even a marginal fan of FIF, and it's practically a steal at the price of a single album.

Band Members:
Reese Roper: Vocals
Dennis Culp: Trombone
Nathanael "Brad" Dunham: Trumpet
Keith Hoerig: Bass
Sonnie Johnston: Guitar
Jeff "The Girl" Ortega: Saxophone
Micah Ortega: Guitar
Andrew Verdecchio: Drums

Website: http://www.fiveironfrenzy.com

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Hanging With Friends