Search - Offspring :: Rise & Fall, Rage & Grace

Wow. Is this for real?

Ryan K. Smotherman | Murfreesboro, TN United States | 07/18/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I've been purchasing items from Amazon for the past 8 or so years and have never written a review for anything I have bought. The fact that I felt compelled to write about this album is a testament to how amazing it is. I admit I wasn't blown away by the first listen. It's one of those albums that just get better and better the more you hear it. Without a doubt it has easily more musical depth and emotion than anything the band has ever done. This is The Offspring's best work ever, hands down.



For those of you who complain about the lack of "punk", get real, punk has been dead for a long time. This is just an amazing american rock band making great music. Best album I've heard in years and it definitely wasn't from a band I expected.



Nice work guys."

A Wise Choice

EerieVonEvil | The Rabbit Hole | 06/28/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I'd rather not condemn Offspring for changing up their musical style. Ever since Ixnay On The Hombre, Offspring have been incorporating non-punk elements into thier music throughout the years and I always thought that it set them apart from other punk bands. I think this is a fine album from the band and better than Splinter. I mean, how can you expect this band to continue to play the same ol' style after 20+ years? I'm glad to hear something different from them. Nothingtown, You're Gonna Go Far Kid, The O.C. Life cover. Great stuff. Am I the only one who thinks that A Lot Like Me sounds like a Linkin Park song? I dont like Linkin Park, so I have to say that Offspring does LP better than they do. The only song I dont care for is Kristi Are You Doing Ok because it sounds too Emo. Bottom Line, if you have stuck with Offspring through the years, then give this album a chance because it is the best one since Americana in my opinion...minus the EMo song that is! Heh."

It won't "Change the World", but it'll hammer in your head

Darren A. Conroy | Boston, MA, USA | 08/10/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Telling people I really like the Offspring isn't something that's easy to do. They have a very solid discography but starting with 1998's Americana it became peppered and eventually nearly saturated with guilty pleasures. There's not really song on 2003's Splinter that you can admit to loving without getting stripped of all "punk credentials". It was something I didn't mind, since I'm the kind of guy who's used to defending his musical taste. But when Hammerhead was released as the first single from the first proper studio effort from the Offspring in five years, something was magical about it. It was lengthy, yes, and a little pretentious in how it was drawn out, but it was a positively rockin' song. It had the adrenaline-pumping riffs, the smart lyrics and the trademark Offspring hook to give me the satisfaction of listening to any of their finest songs without having to worry about how I'm going to defend the record when talking with my music snob compatriots. For once, I was going to buy an Offspring album, crank it up, sing along with the irresistable choruses while the critics and fans backed me up on my emotions 100%, right? Right?



I would be right, if the critics weren't heartless bastards. I won't pretend there's nothing to critique here, but the resounding critical consensus is that the Offspring are "punk veterans" who should "know better" than to have a simple thesis for their album such as "[stuff] is [messed] up", before going on about what a splendid record Smash was. And I'm not denying Smash was indeed a fantastic album, but they're clearly tinting their shades a bit rose. Dexter Holland's lyrics were never anything like Bad Religion's polysyllabic political musings or NOFX's aggressive blasts against anything establishment. Dexter's lyrics are, and always have been, social in their context. "I'm not the one who made the world what it is today / I'm not the one who caused the problems started long ago" is not far removed at all from "I don't know too much / but I know this: [stuff] is [messed] up!" It's always been the same in that the songs are less about the government's specific wrongdoings and more so about ubiquitous attitudes and vices that, since they run rampant through our government, work as political songs, but apply to your boss, your friend, your significant other, your parents, etc. as well as they do the president. There's nothing condescending, preachy or all-knowing about it. More than can be said about tracks like Holiday, which I suppose these critics are using as their golden example to judge all punk albums hereafter to, but it simply boils down to "War sucks, screw Bush" with little more than artistic inflection elevating it to three minutes in length. Punk started out of aggression towards politicians, and now the credentials required to make a punk album is to practically be one? If Dexter Holland was valedictorian in high school and claims to not know too much, and Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong was a stoner high school dropout who is now claiming to be qualified to know how to fix our country's problems, someone is clearly padding their résumé.



That's not to say that Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace is the album I hoped for. The guilt abounds whether it's the kind of guilt one gets from listening to My Chemical Romance on the album's bleeding-heart opening anthem Half-Truism, ("If we don't make it alive / It's a hell of a good day to die"? Really?) the guilt one gets from any of their genre-niche novelty songs in the dance-rock "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" (which nails the pleasure center of your brain in ways Fall Out Boy's Dance, Dance only claimed to do), and the ballads. OK, chill out, there's only two of them. There's Kristy, Are You Doing OK, which despite the noble subject matter (Dex tries to make peace with letting his childhood friend's domestic abuse go unreported) chokes when Bob Rock assembles the song by the All-American Rejects playbook, except he skipped the page that says "have a breakdown or key change to keep the song from being skip-button-abusively monotonous by the last chorus". Fix You, however, has nothing to do with its Coldplay-borne namesake and resembles more a less-mechanical Chasing Cars. There's no abundance of major-key radio-ready monsters here, unlike the four albums that came before it here, though. In their place, though, are three very good up-tempo songs that sound bright and jovial without ceasing to sound like the punky Offspring that filled out the rest of the album.



I give the Offspring a hard time. And maybe I'm not so different from the critics I spent half this review blasting in that I feel the boys are capable of more than they've put forth on this album. But truthfully, there's been something missing in the five years they took off, and a summer drive with a new bangin' Offspring song on my car stereo is a pleasure I haven't indulged in for a good long while. Even if I don't have the balls to listen with the windows down. Bottom line, if you like classic rough punk Offspring but also have a soft spot in your heart for slick, hooky poppy Offspring, this record doesn't just mash the two concepts together, but satisfies both concepts in one of the most well-rounded, coherent albums the O.C. band has put together in a long time. It's a shame the critics don't share my enthusiasm. [Stuff] is [messed] up indeed."