1115. The Offspring / Let the Bad Times Roll. 2021. 3.5/5

Any time that a band that is as universally admired and loved as The Offspring was during the 1990’s and through the 2000’s that then finds itself in a lull of some years in regards to new material being released, will necessarily have questions asked of it. Even when you look at the story, and discover the legal problems that required fixing, the loss of their recording contract, the change of personnel within and around the band, and finally a pandemic that delayed the eventual release of their new material by almost 18 months, it is hard to fathom that there was a nine year wait between albums. That’s Metallica-like, though with the depreciating returns from album sales to artists it is becoming a more routine thing. Eventually though, after various writing and recording spurts and a final waiting call due to Covid19, we have the new Offspring album in our hands, titled Let the Bad Times Roll.

From the outset this is an album that lyrically is following a similar pattern to voicing how the world was witnessing the mood within the United States in particular over the past four years, if not longer. The vocals may not be as belligerently hostile as they were with the band 25 years ago, but there’s little doubt in the words exactly what they are saying. Lyrics such as these from the opening track, “This is Not Utopia” - “These dying streets are bruised and beaten, and riot flags are waving, poor and weak, we extend this streak, these lives we could be saving”. Even the title gives away the band’s thoughts on their home country – and this was recorded BEFORE what happened in the US during 2020. There’s a lot more material there just from those 12 months. This then leads into the title track, “Let the Bad Times Roll” – which musically at least to me is so much like a Fall Out Boy song. Lyrically and visually however it continues down the same path as the album opener, this time focusing on the fevered supporters of the former US President, with hard-hitting and relevant lyrics such as “Mexicans and blacks and Jews, got it all figured out for you, gonna build a wall let you decide, apathy or suicide”. No holds barred there, from the lead single released from the album a few weeks ago.

The songs become a bit more melancholy with “Behind Your Walls” and into “Army of One”. The Offspring have done these kinds of songs before (see “Self Esteem” and “Gone Away”), but “Behind Your Walls” lacks the same kind of massive angst and powerful music behind it that other songs of the genre hold. “Army of One” has much more in common with typical Offspring tracks, a great up-tempo push with positive spin on the lyrics, closer to what they are renown for. “Breaking These Bones” comes with an even more morbid observation on break ups... I mean, I know Taylor Swift has made a career out of writing songs on break ups, but is an angsty song by a band with members in their mid-50's just pushing that a little too far? Maybe it is me that is just too old, and songs like these aren’t aimed at me at all (no kidding Grandpa...).
“Coming to You” is one of the older songs appearing here, having first been played live back in 2015. If you are looking for the atypical Offspring song on this album, then this is where you come to. A jiving beat, lyrics that are alternately spitting yet amusing, and all with that great vocal quality of fun yet drive.
I still don’t know how to take “We Never Have Sex Anymore”. Is it comedy or serious or pisstake? The horns section comes in throughout, giving this a completely different feel to every other song on the album – that “big band” feeling with the trombones and trumpets and clarinet and saxophone. Does anyone else remember Helloween doing a brass version of their great song “Dr Stein” for their best of album “Unarmed”? Yeah, that’s how awkward I feel about this song. It’s the pisstake song of the album, the one that comes closest to being the track you sing like “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” and “Why Don’t You Get a Job”, but without the real fun usually involved. Though teenagers may get a kick out of it.

“The Opioid Diaries” and “Hassan Chop” are the two songs that should have combined as the album closers, and are as bombastic lyrically as the opening two tracks. “The Opioid Diaries” is where the band opens up and channels their finer alt punk moments, fast and furious musically and lyrically and hard hitting at the pharmaceutical companies. This is one of the best songs on the album. And then “Hassan Chop” continues the drilling pace and flows without favour on religious wars being waged, with both sides claiming that their God helps them win. Once again, both of these songs lyrics leave nothing to the imagination, fear no favour, and give their fans listening something to consider beyond the songs themselves.
While that should have been the close of the album, it is instead completed by a piano ballad version of their hit song “Gone Away”, followed by the acoustic “Lullaby”, which acts as a reprise of the chorus of the title track. Perhaps everyone involved felt it best to finish on this quiet note after the hard core of what preceded it, but personally I feel it acts as a slight letdown to the thoughtful songs that came before it.

When I first listened to the album, I was not overly enamoured. The kind of fast paced and in-your-face attitude that the band’s music gave us on albums such as Smash and Ixnay on the Hombre has been toned down, doubtless in the main because they were 25 years ago and musicians and bands and individuals all change over that lengthy period of time. But in many ways even the energy that flowed through Americana and Conspiracy of One isn’t quite as apparent here on Let the Bad Times Roll. And as I can appreciate with all bands with such a lengthy time span, that is a similar story. There is also the problem that nine years have passed since the release of Days Go By, and with the problems that have met the band at every turn during that time, it isn’t such a surprise that things get changed up, and that maybe some of the spark gets lost in the mix. And no band can ever be condemned for wanting to try some different ideas in their song writing.

But I shouldn’t focus on the past, I should be looking at the present. And in a world that would appear ready to explode with new recorded material, all composed and recorded during a year when there was little else to do but to observe the world as it is and write about it, Let the Bad Times Roll may well be at the forefront of that movement. The fact that these songs were composed before 2020 started is interesting, because most of the subjects the songs here are about were probably more relevant last year than before that. In essence, this album actually shows that of all the political and activism problems that blew up in 2020, they all had a base well before the year of the pandemic arrived. In a current historical sense, that could be seen to be eye opening.
For all of its less exciting moments, all mostly within the middle of the album, they are bookended by some excellent ripostes by a band that, although they had never gone away, still managed to release what may yet be considered as the comeback album of the year by the time we get to December 2021. And in the current world of music, that’s not a bad thing at all.

Rating: "Because our God is righteous, and yours the one to blame". 3.5/5