No Parents bare their new songs (and some butt cheeks) in full-throttle party at the Smell

Britt Witt on
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It doesn’t take long for singer Zoe Reign to get down to his skivvies at a No Parents show, and by the third song at the Smell on Thursday night he was sporting nothing but burgundy Doc Martens, black briefs and a “Player” ball cap.

After making the crowd giggle to his Taylor Swift lip-syncing (who plays Taylor Swift at a DIY punk venue, anyway?), No Parents dove right into their 16-song set with the fan favorite “Hey Grandma,” the straightforward punk-rock track that has been riling teenagers since last October.

The quartet made few references to the celebration at hand — the release of their debut cassette on Burger Records, “May The Thirst Be With You” — and they were unusually sober. But that didn’t stop the beach ball-punching, belly-smacking, crowd-surfing and assorted debauchery.

While No Parents’ lyrics are comically juvenile (“Hey Illuminati / let us join / that would be tight”), the musicianship is top-drawer. Bassist Killian LeDuke and guitarist Ryan “Ducky” McGuffin didn’t have to heavily rely on distortion to mask sloppy riffs (because there were none) and drummer Monte Nojera showed off his beastly skills on tracks like “Pizza” and “Die Hippie Die,” pounding so fast on his newly hand-painted drum heads that he was nothing but a blur of long black hair.

Amidst technical difficulties and breaths between songs, Reign kept his onlookers rowdy with banter (“Raise your hand if you have a dildo”) and even got the crowd to pat their knees because it “sounds like it’s raining!”

Straddling the line between punk rock and speed metal, No Parents cover the historic map from melodic Sex Pistols (“I’m A Dildo”) to Pixies doom-punk (“Pizza”). As the ceiling dripped with sweat, the call-and-response finale “Drunkest In The Room” sealed the crowd berserk and kept us thirsty for more.

Openers Feels and Lovely Bad Things proved a proper build-up to the gnarly headliners, pairing sweet punk ballads and garage rock, concluding with a boisterous “No Parents” chant.