Home From Home found Millencolin stretching out and showing just how much range lives inside their high-speed, melodic punk DNA. While rooted in the band’s Swedish skate punk core, this album isn’t afraid to take detours across a wide variety of punk genres. There’s a garage rock looseness to tracks like “Man or Mouse,” a more refined pop-punk sensibility in “Fingers Crossed,” and the kind of driving anthemic energy that made the early 2000s such a golden era for punk splayed across the whole album. It’s tight, confident, and full of hooks, but never over-polished. There’s a looseness here, a kind of lived-in grit that makes the whole thing feel like it’s blasting from the inside of a half-pipe somewhere. Which is exactly where it belongs.
For a generation of punk fans, Millencolin were a staple. Reliable, evolving, and always rooted in a love for the scene itself. Bands like New Found Glory, The Ataris, and even latter-era Green Day owe more than a little to Millencolin’s melodic instincts and their willingness to explore the genre. And for me personally, Millencolin has played an incredible role on my own songwriting. My high school band The Days of Stillness took a lot of inspiration from them (this album specifically) serving as an oft-overlooked but ultimately key foundation for our approach to songwriting. It’s still a nostalgic feeling I feel to this day. Home From Home might not have reinvented punk, but it reminded everyone how many shades the genre could wear. And most importantly, how good it feels when it all comes together.
Standout Songs: “Man or Mouse”, “Fingers Crossed”, “Black Eye”, “Kemp”, “Happiness For Dogs”
