Review by Lucas Bell
Punk rock legends The Offspring are once again making some major noise and will be releasing their new album SUPERCHARGED, available October 11, via Concord Records.
Lead singer Dexter Holland has said about this record, “We wanted this record to have pure energy – from the start to the finish! That’s why we called it SUPERCHARGED. From the height of our aspirations to the depths of our struggles, we talk about it all on this record…in a way that celebrates the life that we share and where we are now. Our single ‘Make It All Right’ is a great example of this because it talks about the people in our lives who make us feel strong when we are feeling low – our partners in crime who make us feel all right. The album was recorded in three different locations this time around: Maui, Vancouver, and our home studio in Huntington Beach, and together with our producer Bob Rock everything came out awesome. I feel like this is the best we have ever sounded! We’ve been rocking out and headbanging to it for months! And we can’t wait for you guys to hear it!”
‘Looking Out for #1’ opens the record with the distinct sound of Dexter Holland’s iconic vocals. The album opener is very much a paint by numbers type of track of the type of stuff The Offspring have been making the last few years. Not my cup of tea, but the song isn’t bad by any stretch. The song does have a killer guitar solo on it though. The album really kicks off for me though, with the second track, ‘Light It Up’. This feels like classic Offspring. The lyrics, instrumentation, and vocal delivery punch all together in a tidy track just a hair under 3 minutes.
The pop punk nostalgia continues into ‘The Fall Guy’ and ‘Make It All Right’, with both songs feeling like a true throwback, and energy the band feels like it’s been missing the last few years. The gang vocals on ‘The Fall Guy’ feel like they’d be super fun live, and lead single ‘Make It All Right’ is definitely a bop. Something I didn’t expect to find out though, is that Rebecca Shoichet is the one doing the additional vocals on “Make It All Right”. She does a lot of voice over work and anime dubs, so this was kinda sick to see someone that doesn’t exist in the music space, doing something completely unexpected.
‘Ok, but This Is the Last Time’ is a much more melancholic song that is actually pretty beautiful. It’s nice when a band that have been around for 40 years, can rip out a song like this and genuinely surprise me with how good it is, because it’s not a song I expected from them, this deep into their careers. The song has strings for crying out loud. It’s so good. ‘Truth in Fiction’ quickly whiplashed me back into the pop punk high energy with another pretty good bop of a song. But I was not expecting what came next.
There has been a lot of talk about the song ‘Come to Brazil’. It’s probably the most metal adjacent song The Offspring have ever done. Everything about this song, rips. Noodles spoke with Matt Bingham of Z93 Radio, where he said about the song, “Each song is viewed separately. And then once you have a bunch of songs, then you kind of see where the record is going And then you just try to build on that. I don’t think we’ve ever changed that much. We’ve never done a concept record. We never went, ‘All right, we’re done with this punk rock pop stuff. We wanna be metal now.’ There is at least one song on this record that I would call metal. It’s just thrash metal. It’s called ‘Come To Brazil’… It’s one of the most metal. I don’t know [about] heaviest. We’ve got a lot of heavy punk rock songs as well, but this one’s probably one of the heaviest metal ones for sure.” The song is so much fun, and shows The Offspring should pivot into heavier material.
‘Get Some’ and ‘Hanging by a Thread’ keeps the heavy vibes rolling, with ‘Get Some’ feeling like a song that belongs in a Guitar Hero game. The little arpeggio in the verses feel fun, and I can just imagine how sick it would be to play them on Guitar Hero. ‘Hanging by a Thread’ is a slower song, but the instrumentation is just as heavy as in parts to ‘Come to Brazil’ and ‘Get Some’. Definitely a fun mosh song for sure. The album finishes off with ‘You Can’t Get There from Here’. I’m not particularly a fan of this track. But it definitely will have it’s fans. There is an era of the band where I fell off because I wasn’t a big fan of this sound. But I can appreciate it all the same.
The album does have a lot for fans of every era of the band, and some songs that truly surprise. It both feels like a return to form for the California natives, while also exploring new territory and showing us they’re more than capable of exploring new sounds and innovating within their space. A must listen record for the die hards.
Song recommendations: Light It Up, Ok, but This Is the Last Time, Come to Brazil.
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