Stop Everything: There Is A Ned Flanders-Themed Metal Band For Some Reason

A couple of weeks ago now, we riffed on the idea of what a festival would look like if it was entirely populated with bands named after characters, sayings and so forth from The Simpsons. There were some omissions — deliberate (Fall Out Boy) or otherwise (Dr Colossus, Dogs With Bees In Their Mouths) — but, to be fair, the whole world is overflowing with Simpsonian references, so it's unsurprising that we would have missed a few in our endeavour to create our hypothetical festival.

Among those we missed — possibly because, as Rip It Up report, they're only a couple of months old as an outfit, and only dropped their first piece of recorded output, a series of demo songs uploaded to Bandcamp called Okilly Demos, a couple of days ago — is Phoenix, Arizona's own Okilly Dokilly, the self-described "world's only NEDAL band", a title we're pretty sure they're not in any danger of losing any time soon. 

We're not exactly sure what is entailed in being 'nedal' outside of an affinity for having your own Ned-name (the band comprises Head Ned, Bled Ned, Red Ned, Thread Ned and Stead Ned), facial hair, spectacles and green-and-pink upperwear, because there doesn't really seem to be much else going on for this band as far as standards are concerned. Like, we know these are demos, but… in the immortal words of Ned Flanders himself, "My family and I can't live in good intentions, Marge."

That said, their homage to the Leftorium — All That Is Left — and its pun-heavy bridge are pretty damn wonderful, while the dichotomous vibe of Nothing At All, which blows out from wobbly introspection to balls-out stomp-rock, replete with vocal tip-of-the-hat to The Offspring's Gone Away, is probably the best thing on the tape. Give it a spin below.