If one were to ask a lapsed The Offspring fan - maybe one of the 11 million people who bought Smash in the mid-'90s, but subsequently decided that the band weren't 'cool' anymore when their listening habits switched to heavier music - to guess which of the group's back catalogue albums Light It Up and The Fall Guy appear on, they might make an educated guess at Ixnay on the Hombre (1997) and Splinter (2003), respectively. This, incidentally, is not a criticism of songs two and three on the Southern Californian pop-punk band's 11th album, but a compliment, for on Supercharged Dexter Holland's band sound as fired up as they have ever been.
It's hard to think of another multi-platinum rock band who are as consistently under-rated as The Offspring. Back when 'Music Television' actually held the attention of teenagers for hours and hours on end, heavy rotation of the videos for hit singles Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) and the admittedly pretty awful Original Prankster, helped foster an unfair impression of the Orange County quartet as a novelty act, and in 2024, The Offspring's aren't even afforded the misty-eyed nostalgia granted to their hugely inferior successors Blink-182 or Sum 41, nevermind the bewildering acclaim bestowed upon the likes of Neck Deep or Magnolia Park. And it's fair to say that, following on from 2021's inessential Let The Bad Times Roll, the world's isn't awaiting a new Offspring album with the same anticipation as say, The Cure's upcoming Songs Of A Lost World.
Regardless, Supercharged, produced by Bob Rock, who has worked with the band on every album from 2008's Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace onwards, is a triumph, and a late-career highlight.
If you've the slightest affection for fan favourite songs such as The Kids Aren't Alright or Gone Away, then Light It Up, the speeding two-minute-long Truth In Fiction (“Society’s a fiction, we replace the truth with myth”) - the best Bad Religion song in years - the ridiculously-infectious Make It All Right and album closer You Can't Get There From Here, with its shades of The Who, will quicken pulses. Not everything works - the “Ole! Ole! Ole!” outro to Come To Brazil should have been left to the Dropkick Murphys - but from the album artwork's cheeky nod to Metallica's Ride The Lightning to the entirely unanticipated appearance of a riff from Kansas' Carry On Wayward Son during Get Some, The Offspring are clearly still have a blast and are still smashing it in their 40th year. How many bands can say the same?
