ALBUM REVIEW: The Offspring – ‘Supercharged’

Well, that title sure is…brave.

Firstly, there’s been nothing ‘supercharged’ about The Offspring’s output lately. In the last decade-and-a-half, they’ve released precisely two albums, of which the consensus has fallen somewhere between resolute disinterest and outright panning. Nothing new for a band who’ve frequently been unable to decide whether they’re proper punk stalwarts or their own cartoonified doppelgängers, but you’d also imagine that when they’ve been around since 1984, they  should have some idea by now.

So maybe Supercharged is that decision finally made manifest, where The Offspring slim down and harden up to age-appropriate standards. Being their shortest album since 2003’s Splinter, that may be implied. But it’s also the wackier side of The Offspring that’s kept them afloat, at least recently. Cast your mind back to 2021’s Let The Bad Times Roll, and you won’t remember many of the ‘actual’ songs. No, what’ll spring to mind are the inexplicable take on In The Hall Of The Mountain King from 1875, or the cover of Five Finger Death Punch’s cover of their own Gone Away. ‘Cover-ception’, as someone who doesn’t know what ‘inception’ means might call it.

The reality of the situation is, Supercharged is…just an Offspring album. It actually makes some of the early praise seem a little bit suspect, because there’s nothing that radically different from where they’ve been lately. The humour has been turned down but it’s not gone completely; the sound of it all remains functionally the same. The only real difference is how surprisingly faceless this is, even with every effort from The Offspring to prove otherwise. One might imagine when opener Looking Out For #1 goes into a chorus uncannily similar in melody and rhyme scheme to You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid, it’s to prove they’ve still got it. In reality, it just makes you want to listen to a far better song. And God knows why Get Some shunts into an interpolation of the solo of Kansas’ Carry On Wayward Son, apropros of literally, genuinely nothing.

But they’re also the kind of moments you have to pray for on Supercharged, simply for something to grab on to. The lion’s share of this album is either competently mid-level or entirely forgettable. In the former camp, Light It Up might opt for the speedier, harder-drummed punk template that it feels as though The Offspring have a million of now, but it’s still alright within it. As for the latter-day Weezer homage Make It All Right and the sweeter pop-rock of OK, But This Is The Last Time, they’re the sort of fluff that’s not too objectionable, if only for how the band will still throw their determination in.

Then there’s the other side, though, the most representative of Supercharged as a whole. The Fall Guy is another self-ripoff—this time, The Kids Aren’t Alright—but without the good graces to retain even a bit of the same punch. Truth In Fiction is the album’s ’serious’ political song that’s ironically also its most throwaway. Finally, Hanging By A Thread and You Can’t Get There From Here are the double-whammy to cap off the album, and you’ll barely remember a thing about them. They’re the archetypal modern Offspring songs, where the punk and alt-rock instincts of their past are still in there to be picked at, but actually applying them isn’t given too much thought.

That just leaves Come To Brazil, the closest thing to an oddity that Supercharged has. It’s in the ballpark of thrash, for one, which is decently replicated in tone and the Masters Of Puppets-esque production. It’s a little wasted on what the song is, then—an extrapolation on the meme that Brazilian fans are the most dedicated and tenacious out there, into various things in Brazil like caipirinha cocktails, or the colours of the Brazilian flag. As far as ‘jokes’ or even reference-bait songs go, it’s not one of The Offspring’s strongest, even with all the attention it tries to funnel into itself. It really stands apart as the representative for Supercharged’s inconsistency, not on a basis of quality but in how much stock seems to be placed onto certain songs. There are specific tracks designed to suck in focus—this and the obvious callbacks to past Offspring songs being chief among them—with the rest left to die on the vine. (Plus, Come To Brazil isn’t even the best punk song with an “olé” chant from this year, thanks to Cherym’s Taking Up Sports.)

Amongst it all, The Offspring themselves are adequate. Actually, they do deserve a little praise to standing staunch on the punk wagon without too much slowdown after all this time, which is something they’ve kept fairly consistent with. The same goes for Dexter Holland, who hasn’t dialled much of his yell back and seems to have skipped past the adverse effects of it. For someone fast approaching 60, he’s sounding stronger than you might anticipate, especially when he’s required to keep pace with some of his band’s more intense offerings. Speaking of which, the rest of the band also sound fairly energised, albeit not a degree that’s notably out of character. Other than a couple of fresher bass licks from Todd Morse on Get Some, there’s not much to write home about. And while that’s all expected, it’s a bit of a shame that new drummer Brandon Pertzborn doesn’t have more to make for himself. This is a guy who cut his teeth drumming for Ho99o9, mind you, but you’d never be able to tell with how rapidly he’s swallowed up and assimilated.

And thus, the usual summations of The Offspring in these modern times come into full view. They’re not as interesting as they once were, nor as impressive, nor as good. It’s a predictable list to rattle off, fittingly for an album as predictably worth of its contents as Supercharged. If you’re a long-time Offspring fan who’s somehow stuck around to now, you’re probably the only person who’ll really be pleased with this. Otherwise, you’re likely privy to the old-punk fall-off that’s a set-in-stone truth of The Offspring’s output now, of which no amount of nominative determinism can assuage.

Put it this way—you know how batteries naturally degrade and lose energy storage over time? Maybe this is, in fact, what ‘supercharged’ looks like when time has slashed your maximum capacity by such an enormous degree.

For fans of: Green Day, Bad Religion, Sum 41

‘Supercharged’ by The Offspring is out now on Concord Records.

Words by Luke Nuttall