Are they really going to do it? Surely they can’t keep this energy up the whole time. The cliff is coming and they’re going to fall off – right?
Turns out, nope! The new Offspring album is 32 minutes of balls to the wall electricity. A proper punk rock straight shot of roid rage (with a couple of intriguing pop rock detours) that will fire up your blood and put a tingly zing down your spine. The album cover is a skeleton being struck by lightning in the head and spitting the bolt back out at the world. As far as visual depictions of a band’s intentions go, it’s a bit on the nose, but also perfect.
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Singer Dexter Holland has always had a voice that sounds like licking batteries, and it’s as sharp as it’s ever been on Supercharged. He flicks the switch on the opening track ‘Looking Out For #1’ and never looks back. Straining his throat to shriek at the heavens in deceptive harmony for our entertainment, we owe this man a lifetime supply of lozenges.
The most impressive part of Dexter’s vocal performance is that it keeps up with the music. Noodles and new drummer Brandon Pertzborn are driving the album at full speed – no beat is too fast, no power chord is left unthrashed. Chuck in some stadium sized breakdowns and you have a set of songs that will absolutely kill live.
‘Light It Up’ is the best single from the album, and an instant addition to the best of The Offspring set list. A rocket launch of a track, with crunchy fumes streaming out of it’s exhaust – get this song on your hype up playlist immediately.
If anyone in your life asks “what does The Offspring sound like?”, the new answer is to play ‘Light It Up’.
While that is the most ‘pure Offspring’ song on the album, it’s not even the best. Unbelievably Supercharged is the band’s 11th album, and equally as hard to believe is that it might contain The Offspring’s best song …. ever?
‘Truth In Fiction’ is the undeniable stand out on the album for those of us who love the punk rock foundation of the band. Dexter still has anger in him, here it’s about the fractured world and duplicitous media landscape infecting our eyes and brains – so he channels these ideas into 2 minutes of perfect circle pit rage.
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In classic Offspring fashion, the brutal ‘Truth In Fiction’ is sandwiched between the dumbest and poppiest stuff the band has ever committed to record. There’s no time for subtlety when you’re riding a lightning bolt.
Nobody would bet money that a Bizarro Tourism commercial for the country of Brazil from a legacy Californian punk band would be a success, but here we are. 2024 has been full of surprises, but none as pleasant as how hard ‘Welcome To Brazil’ goes.
The guys just really love their Brazilian fans – so wrote a batshit crazy song about them. It’s like if Tourism New Zealand got Green Day to sing about how great our Beef & Lamb is. This song is fun and dumb in the best pop punk way.
For fans of the more radio friendly pop rock side of The Offspring there’s a Beach Boys inspired lead single ‘Make It Alright’. You can see why the people making decisions thought this should be the first single – it’s a nice enough gate way into the rest of the album, playing to a lot of The Offspring’s most mainstream strengths.
It’s safe to say this will either be your most played or most skipped song from the album.
If you wanted to know if being a band for 40 years (!) has aged Dexter and Noodles out of Pop Punk’s immature heart, the answer lies in Track 5. ‘Ok But This is The Last Time’ is a classic Pop Punk bop about a put-upon dude being in a toxic relationship with a demanding girlfriend. The poor guy keeps getting pushed around and is a sucker for punishment!
But if you listen to it again (through a more adult lens), you realise it’s actually a quite touching love song Dexter Holland has written for his kid. No other genre can confuse taking care of a baby and being a in a bad relationship with such a straight face. Cute isn’t what they aim for, but they did it with ‘Ok, But This Is The Last Time’
There are just enough cheese-ball antics on Supercharged to keep it in middle of the Venn diagram called ‘What We Love About The Offspring’.
But the album truly takes off when they light the rocket on their back and run head first into punk rock freneticism with Wiley E Coyote abandon. ‘Fall Guy’ is another standout hard rock track, and the guitar solo on ‘Hanging By A Thread’ is a killer highlight, making sure the electricity that is coursing through the album stays spiky.
Supercharged is an exposed wire of an album. The Offspring could’ve played it safe and phoned it in, but instead they went hard.
It’s fun, angry, and relentless – they must be exhausted.
