Who is Ape Fight?

                 Ape Fight was never a clean story.

It was always somewhere between who we really were and the characters we were playing. Everything got pushed—louder, dumber, funnier, meaner. Not by design. Just because that’s who we were.

Six guys.

Six opinions.

All of them mattered. Too much.

We could all agree on something completely—and one person disagreeing could derail the whole thing. It happened constantly. We never figured out how to just trust each other’s strengths, even though it was obvious that was the only way it worked.

That tension wasn’t a flaw.

That was the band.

We came up in Jersey City basements and bars—Maxwell’s, Loop Lounge, wherever would have us. We made noise. We made scenes. We made it harder than it needed to be.

Somewhere in there, we landed a song on a Hollywood soundtrack (Accepted, 2006). We played rooms that didn’t know what to do with us. And we built something that felt bigger than it probably was.

We were always better as underdogs.

We liked it there.

Then life happened.

We spread out. Jobs. Families. Real things.

The band never broke up.

It just stopped moving.

In 2023, everything stopped for real.

I had heart failure.

Flatlined.

Gone.

And then… not.

A transplant. A second shot. A body that came back before the rest of life caught up.

A few months later, we tried to get back in a room and pick up where we left off.

It didn’t work.

We fought. Again.

And walked away. Again.

That felt like the end.

Then in March 2026, a CD showed up in the mail.

No warning. Just a package from Lou—Don Ape.

Seven songs.

They sounded familiar, but not all the way. Like something half-remembered. I called him.

“What the fuck is this?”

He said,

“This is what we were working on when you died.”

He’d been driving around with it. Lost it. Found it.

And sent it before it disappeared again.

That was the moment.

Because the truth is—Ape Fight never actually ended.

We just never finished this.

Until now.

Final Fantasy is not a comeback record.

It’s not a reunion.

It’s a completion.

Seven songs from a version of us that didn’t get to exist long enough the first time. Raw, ridiculous, offensive, and funny—exactly what we always were. Punk, surf, satire, noise. The same edge, just sharpened by time.

We still fight.

We always will.

But it was never about tearing each other down.

It was about pushing everything further than it needed to go—because we knew it could.

Like brothers. Like family.

The kind that can beat the shit out of each other and still show up the next day.

That’s the engine.

That’s always been the engine.

We’re older now.

Still stubborn. Still idiots. Still us.

But something shifted.

For most of our history, finishing something meant fighting our way through it.

This time was different.

We didn’t grind it out in a room.

We didn’t blow it up halfway through.

We didn’t derail it over one opinion.

We finished this one over emails and texts.

Quietly.

Without a single real fight.

That doesn’t mean we changed.

It just means, somehow, we finally understood what mattered.

We’re all still here.

Alive. Healthy. Still connected.

That alone feels like a miracle.

And somehow, this record survived long enough to prove it.

Ape Fight was never meant to be clean.

If we made a movie, it would’ve been rated R.

If we made a magazine, it would’ve had naked girls, weed, space, cartoons, and nonsense.

That hasn’t changed.

What changed is this:

We finished this one.

Final Fantasy is that ending.

Or maybe it’s not an ending at all.

Maybe it’s just the part where it finally makes sense.

Ape Fight remains what it has always been:

Alive.

Dying.

Fighting.

Fight the Fight!

—Mr. Gamble