There are punk songs that rage, there are punk songs that laugh, and then there's "Fired Once Again" by The Probies, a song that somehow does both at once. Lifted from their upcoming LP, "Impotent and Alone"
With the first dissonant instrumental, a carousel wobbling off its hinges, the Seattle six-piece set the stage for the chaos to come. Guitars buzz with garage-born fuzz, drums lumber with sloppy precision, and the vocals waver somewhere between sneering terrific and desperate howl. There's nothing polished about it, and that's the whole point. "Fired Once Again" is on the verge of crumpling, but it never does. Instead, it skirts the edge, embracing its own instability.
There are some excellent comic sequences in which our narrator recounts his bizarre résumé, having been fired from notable companies such as Disneyland, CNN, and McDonald's, among others. However, there's a more serious layer of darkness underneath. He's more than jobless, he is emotionally alienated, wasted, and drifting in a world that has no place for him. And yet, something is endearing about his ruin. Think the early Buzzcocks crashing head-on with the absurdist wit of Half Man Half Biscuit via a rabbit hole of lo-fi gristle.
Established in 2024 in Seattle, the Probies bear the DNA of their city's rock and grunge legacy but twist it into something sharper, funnier, and more unapologetically bleak. With "Fired Once Again," they are not solutions, it's documentation, with a grin. It's weird, it's sad, and oddly enough, you can almost dance to it.