"The Shark Fighter!" | ||||
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Single by The Aquabats | ||||
from the album Hi-Five Soup! | ||||
Released | December 14, 2010 | |||
Format | Digital single | |||
Recorded | 2010 | |||
Genre | Pop rock, comedy rock, new wave | |||
Length | 2:56 | |||
Label | Fearless Records | |||
Writer(s) | The Aquabats | |||
Producer(s) | Cameron Webb | |||
The Aquabats singles chronology | ||||
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"The Shark Fighter!" is a song by American band The Aquabats from their fifth studio album Hi-Five Soup!, released on Fearless Records in 2011. The song was issued as a single in December 2010, the second single released from Hi-Five Soup! following "Radio Down!" in November 2010.
Like a good number of The Aquabats' songs such as "Captain Hampton and the Midget Pirates!" or "Tiger Rider vs. the Time Sprinkler!", "The Shark Fighter!" is a humorous narrative centered on the outlandish adventures of a fictional character. In this instance, the song pertains to the eponymous Shark Fighter, a wavy-haired ocean vigilante who dedicates his life to avenging the implied shark-related death of his past lover by single-handedly fighting the sea's shark population, with the song noting "He will not die/Until all sharks cry".
Musically, the song follows in the same guitar-driven pop rock direction as most of Hi-Five Soup!, featuring The Aquabats' characteristic new wave-influenced synthesizer melodies, a type of sound which Punknews.org specifically described as being like "Devo on a sugar high". The instrumentation of the song additionally features an introductory timpani roll and a simulated choir to lend the track a grand and pseudo-orchestral feel.
On December 14, The Aquabats released "The Shark Fighter!" as an exclusive stream on their official Facebook page. On January 4, 2011, two weeks before the release of Hi-Five Soup!, "The Shark Fighter!" was released to iTunes as a downloadable single.
While critical response to Hi-Five Soup! was generally mixed, "The Shark Fighter!" received almost unanimous praise as one of the album's standout tracks and one of The Aquabats' overall best songs. Punk publication DyingScene listed "The Shark Fighter!" as one of the album's tracks which "definitely hold up to the sound of their past albums", sentiments echoed by the likes of Geekscape, who called the "wackiness" of the song's concept "classic 'Bats", and the OC Weekly newspaper, who opened their review with the first line of the song, writing "And with those words...The Aquabats are once again at it".