Five Iron Frenzy – Cheeses… Of Nazareth (B-sides)

1: Cheeses… actually begins with the aforementioned track “Kamikaze”, which is excellent. It’s one of our favorite Five Iron tracks. 2: “Rhubarb Pie” is next, featuring absolutely hilarious lyrics about homemade rhubarb pie. 3: “Marty” is another one of the four serious songs on here. It was originally only released on FIF’s Brad Is Dead vinyl EP. 4: “Fistful Of Sand (Live)” is a live demo which, in this album’s liner notes, Reese aptly describes as ’embarrassing’. They recorded this before the lyrics were actually finished, so Reese, as he again puts it, is ‘just basically singing gibberish’. The real version of this song can be found on FIF’s Our Newest Album Ever!. 5: “Four Kids In Memphis” is a nonsense ‘song’ (with 4 lines!). 6: “Mind For Treason” is another ‘serious’ song, at least lyrically… musically though, believe it or not, it’s Punk/Metal! 7: “Cool Enough For You (Demo)”, 8: “Third World Think Tank (Demo)”, & 9: “Old West (Demo)” are just that— demos. The real versions of these three songs can be found on FIF’s Upbeats and Beatdowns. 10: “Burn” was recorded for Five Iron Frenzy’s very first demo, but was never released until now. They say ‘thank goodness it wasn’t’, but it’s actually not that bad. If it had been correctly produced, it could have landed on one of their actual albums.

11: “Left”, the final serious song on Cheeses…, is another very-first-demo recording that is actually good. “Left” almost certainly would have landed on one of their albums had it been produced. 12: “Never Ask Us To Play This” is a very humorous short track telling fans to never ask the band to play certain songs. 13: “Dog Food” is a song about eating dog food (!). Reese admits that his vocals are pretty awful on this particular song, but blames it on his bandmates who supposedly ‘made’ him sing like that. 14: “When I See Her Face” starts off rather nice, with sort of ‘story’-style lyrics, but then it degrades into a joke. 15: “Abraham Lincoln Beard, First Movement” is just plain strange. 16: “Praise The Lord” is a short, funny, vocally-modulated song. 17: “Give Me Back My Sandwich” is self-explanatory— it’s just that one line. 18: “Omnivores For Mediocrity” makes fun of bandmember Keith’s (supposedly) vegetarian diet. 19: “That Tastes Horrible” is a humorous track consisting of that single line combined with the sound of glass breaking. 20: “No Grandma = Know Grandma” is a short track of weird nonsense, sung in an absurd falsetto.

21: “Stinky Hippy” is one of the strangest tracks on here. 22: “Abraham Lincoln Beard, Second Movement” is, again, just strange. 23: “It’s So Hot…” is almost completely gibberish (and they have this gibberish actually written out in the liner notes!). It’s so ridiculous, it’s funny. 24: “Thea And The Singing Telegram” is a recording of a humorous practical joke/prank phone call Five Iron paid to their friend Thea. 25: “How’s About Some Milk” is a short track about milk and dairy. 26: “Donkey Basketball” is, again, just weird. 27: “Screams in the Night”— we have no idea what this one is about, if anything, but it’s funny. 28: “Pootermobile” and 29: “Abraham Lincoln Beard, Third Movement” are both, again, just strange. 30: “Mayonnaise Taco Monday” is disgustingly funny.

31: “Chew Water” then goes beyond disgusting to just plain wrong. 32: “Metal Rules!” is (for once) a great song! It has Metal music, but the ‘vocals’ are chipmunk-style (!)— and the lyrics are hilarious nonsense! You’ll probably want to listen to this one again. 33: “Five Iron Is Stupid” is a short, goofy criticism of themselves. And, last but not least, there’s a bonus 34th track (not listed on the CD back), featuring Reese Roper wildly screaming something almost unintelligible at the top of his lungs.