How long can a band sit on its own unfinished business before the noise starts sounding even better?

Toronto grunge-punk outfit MENSA DROPOUT has been answering that question since 2004, and with Nuclear Slush Breaker, the band is finally cashing in on two decades of musical unfinished business. Not with a nostalgia-fueled victory lap, but with the kind of crooked, loud, beautifully unruly energy that makes punk feel less like a genre and more like a refusal to grow boring.

The backstory is practically punk rock folklore in the making. The band first came together in 2004, recording songs on a forty-dollar boombox before frontman Ash Buchholz’s career with Canadian alternative rock band USS pulled him in another direction. A 2016 revival, featuring bassist Steph Seki and drummer Tokyo Speirs, hit another wall when Speirs joined Walk Off The Earth. Two attempts, two stalled records, and enough career detours to kill most projects before they ever found their footing.

Then came 2024, when a message from YouTube fingerboarding personality SkatepunxFB looking for music for a video unexpectedly kicked the whole thing back into motion. Guitarist Brett Carruthers joined the lineup, the band dropped “Disconnection” in 2025, and now Nuclear Slush Breaker finally exists outside the purgatory of good intentions.

Sometimes the universe doesn’t send a sign. Sometimes it sends a fingerboarder.