After four decades behind the drums for everyone from the Vandals and Devo to Foo Fighters and his current return to Nine Inch Nails, Josh Freese has earned his status as rock’s ultimate secret weapon. His résumé reads like a museum wing of modern alt-rock history with over 400 album credits, tours with everyone from Guns N’ Roses to Sting, Paramore to the Replacements. But when Freese steps out on his own, that’s when he really flexes his chops.

Enter Just A Minute, Vol. 2, the follow-up to his brilliantly unhinged 2023 experiment in short-form songwriting. The concept remains deceptively simple: 25 songs, each one minute long. But what Freese wrings out of those 60 seconds, again and again, 25 times over, is pure, irrepressible mayhem. Or, as he calls it, “the Kill Bill 2 of rock ’n’ roll sequels.”

Where another drummer might see a novelty record, Freese sees a playground. Across these bite-sized blasts, he shape-shifts through genres with the speed and precision of a musical stunt driver. One moment he’s tearing through breakneck punk beats that could’ve been ripped from a Vandals rehearsal; the next he’s dropping into bubblegum pop hooks, jagged alternative riffs, swampy grooves, or soft-focus piano miniatures that sound like they wandered in from another album entirely. The connective tissue is Freese’s personality, sharp, irreverent, and relentlessly self-aware. His one-minute dispatches are packed with sideways humor, personal confessions, deadpan storytelling, and flashes of social commentary that somehow don’t feel rushed despite the stopwatch always ticking. It’s a strange, exhilarating alchemy. The songs are over almost as soon as they begin, yet each feels like it arrives fully formed.

If Vol. 1 introduced the idea, Vol. 2 perfects the execution. The pacing is tighter, the production punchier, the jokes sharper, the emotional moments sneakier. Freese’s versatility has never been in question, but here it becomes the album’s punchline and its point, proof that scene boundaries melt away when you have the chops (and the guts) to treat them like toys.