My Unconditional Love of Napalmpom

Roughly a month and a half ago I pre-ordered the début album from one of my favourite Calgary bands. The kickass group known as Napalmpom finally released an album, titled The Unconditional Love of Napalmpom. I'm not about to do a full review of the album, as others have done it already, and better than I would. The only things I will say are as follows

This Album Kicks Ass

Napalmpom's bio on their Facebook page, press releases etc. refers to the band as playing "celebratory rock n' roll so good even the members of the band play air guitar along to it" and this album delivers on that promise. Seriously, check out this hilarious video for their song Guided by Volume, in which they overlaid their audio on a Mumford and Sons video.

They Market Themselves in Hilarious and Awesome Ways

This past Friday (November 28) the band played a gig at The Plaza Theatre along with the movie This is Spinal Tap. To me, this speaks volumes about the band being in it for the love of music and the fun of rock. 

The album cover for The Unconditional Love of Napalmpom is a coloring book style drawing, with the art being a mashup of Schoolhouse Rock style lettering and irreverant rock imagery twisted into an almost kid friendly form. The first 200 preorders (including my preorder) of the vinyl version of the album came with DoodleArt markers with which you could color your own album cover.

This might seem relatively minor, but for me it was a genius marketing ploy, I brought the album to a bar for my friends to help me color it, and most of them, never having heard of Napalmpom immediately wanted to hear the album. I showed them all. Were it not for this cool concept for an album cover, I likely would have mentioned the album to only a few people, along with playing it at parties and at work. Instead, this got us all talking about the album. 

Kudos to the band for creating an amazing album and a kickass marketing ploy to go with it.

I hope that these guys buck the unfortunate trend of short lived Calgary bands, I honestly feel like they have a ton of potential, and could make it pretty fuckin' big.

I give this album 11/11. Go check it out, buy it, and go see these guys live. 

Napalmpom Bandcamp Link