Music / Teenage Bottlerocket

"The creatures of the night
Can't hold a candle to this
We'll be kickin' ass, we'll be takin' names
When we're bigger than KISS!"

Formed in Laramie, Wyoming in 2000, Teenage Bottlerocket are a Pop Punk four-piece signed to Fat Wreck Chords, started by twin brothers Ray Carlisle and Brandon Carlisle. From the start, the band has been heavily influenced by old school punk bands like The Ramones (whom the band often gets compared to), The Queers and The Misfits, and characterized by a loud, non-stop attack with juvenile humor, in the classic Pop Punk tradition.

The band were a Rock Trio at first, and had some trouble keeping a guitarist until they settled on Kody Templeman from the Lillingtons (and if you’re familiar with that band, you’ll know he’s a perfect fit for this one), who filled in for a tour and finished the tour as a permanent member. Miguel Chen took over bass duties so Ray Carlisle could switch to guitar, thereby making the band a four-piece from then on.

Tragedy struck the band in November of 2015 due to the unexpected death of Brandon Carlisle. A couple months later, Darren Chewka of Old Wives was announced as the band's new drummer.

As of 2020, Teenage Bottlerocket have eight full-length albums (or as full-length as half-hour punk records can be) and six EPs.

Studio albums:

1. Another Way (2003)
2. Total (2005)
3. Warning Device (2008)
4. They Came from the Shadows (2009)
5. Freak Out! (2012)
6. Tales from Wyoming (2015)
7. Stealing the Covers (2017)
8. Stay Rad! (2019)
9. Sick Sesh! (2021)

Extended Plays:

1. A-Bomb (2002)
2. Mutilate Me (2011)
3. Ice Age / Walked in Line (2012)
4. American Deutsch Bag (2013)
5. In My Youth (2017)
6. Goin' Back to Wyo (2017)

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Teenage Bottlerocket provide examples of:

• Animated Music Video: For “Bigger Than Kiss,” featuring animated members of KISS getting constantly humiliated.
• Anti-Love Song: A few of these, but Limited Lyrics Song "Go Away" is the apex.
• Cluster F-Bomb: "Shit Fuck God Damn." Just the title alone counts.
• Cover Version: Stealing The Covers has the novel idea of covering songs by particularly obscure punk rock bands. They also released a cover of Green Day’s “Having A Blast” as a standalone single.
• Drugs Are Bad: “The First Time That I Did Acid Was The Last Time That I Did Acid.” Pretty self-explanatory.
• Going Postal: "Blood Bath At Burger King" which lives up to its title.
• Head Banger: They have a song with this title!
• Limited Lyrics Song: “She’s Not The One.” They just sing the title over and over again, and that’s it. Also, "Go Away."
• Live Album: Live In '06, released in 2009. They really show their Ramones influence live, with little space between songs other than a shouted "ONETOOTREEFAH!"
• Lyrical Dissonance: "Bloodbath at Burger King" is a very upbeat pop-punk tune about a disgruntled employee fantasizing about slaughtering everyone at his restaurant in fairly graphic detail. The entire coda of the song is about everything in the restaurant getting blood splattered all over it.
• Miniscule Rocking: Plenty of their songs don't even crack the two minute mark. "Olivia Goes To Bolivia," "I Wanna Be Your Dog," "Crashing," and half the songs on Another Way are some examples. "Patrick" and "Bottlerocket" don't even crack one minute, and the shortest is "Shit Fuck God Damn" at 36 seconds.
• Pop Punk: Less blink-182 and more The Ramones and The Queers.
• Shout-Out: Now here's a band not shy about pop culture references.
  • "Nothing Else Matters (When I'm With You)" is one big one to Metallica, right down to the title.
  • "They Call Me Steve." As in Steve, the default skin in Minecraft. The lyrics talk about Steve in the first person, escaping zombie hordes and killing spiders.
  • If you love Black Metal, you'll likely get a kick out of "Creature From The Black Metal Lagoon" which is chock full of references to the subgenre's most famous — and infamous — figures. Even Venom!
  • "Necrocomicon" has the standard geek references like Yoda and Captain Kirk.
• Stalker with a Crush: "So Cool" seems like a song about wanting to hang with the protagonist's girlfriend all the time. The girl's actually dating someone else, and the protagonist turns out to be this trope.
• Strictly Formula: They definitely have the loud, fast, catchy punk barrage down to a science.
• Take That!: “Bigger Than Kiss” is, of course, a playful jab at KISS.
• Three Chords and the Truth: At top volume.
• Toilet Humor: The “I Wanna Be Your Dog” video, with a lot of pissing, shitting dogs.

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