THE BEST thing one can say about Enema Of The State is that it’s only 35 minutes long. And if that sounds unduly harsh, trust me when I say that if there’s been a worse album released this year then I’ve yet to hear it.

The resolutely small-scale, self-consciously “zany” metal-lite purveyed by Blink-182 is the kind of stuff that was popularised when Rage Against The Machine lumbered into view six years ago, and that still goes down a bomb in places like Oregon and Colorado.

Musically, there’s nothing here that we haven’t already heard a million times before from eejits like Limp Bizkit; lyrically, the record is littered with the kind of puns and bon mots that make the average Green Day song look like the work of John Updike. The song titles alone – ‘Dysentery Gary’, ‘Going Away To College’, ‘Dumpweed’ – are medal-winningly puerile.

An album made by and for the people who sit in the public gallery of the swimming pool of life, Blink-182 is dull, ugly music without even puerile shock-value to recommend it. This stuff passes for punk rock in the States, y’know.