Have a Nice Day, Motherfucker

AMG Review of Have a Nice Day, Motherfucker

Mark Deming
All Music Guide

1996 was not a good year for the Mono Men. A warehouse fire destroyed the band's equipment and wiped out much of the inventory of Estrus Records, the label run by Mono Men founder Dave Crider. Amidst the confusion, guitarist and singer John Mortensen opted to part company with the group, leaving Crider to handle singing and six-string duties all by himself. No one would blame Crider for having a lot of anger welling up in his system after all that, and he lets it all come pouring out on 1997's Have a Nice Day, Motherfucker. The new three-piece Mono Men let most of their garage rock influences sit on the sidelines this time out, and instead they pummel their way through a sneering set of old-school punk, replete with covers of vintage rippers by Radio Birdman and the Zeros and like-minded originals like "Off My Back," "Hate Your Way," and the brilliantly titled "Hey (You With the Face)." (Former Big Boys guitarist Tim Kerr even stepped in to produce in classic amped-up but stripped-down fashion.) As it turns out, the Mono Men were a damn good punk band, tight and fiery, and Crider's pissed-off persona here suited them well. The band finally threw in the towel within a year of the release of Have a Nice Day, Motherfucker, but this set showed them going out with a bang, bloody (and smoke damaged) but unbowed to the last.