The Offspring - The Offspring (Nitro / Epitaph)
Rated: 3

This reissue of the Offspring 's out-of-print 1989 debut contains "Blackball," the song that forklift operator Jason McLean often screamed for at early Offspring shows. The band eventually enlisted the heckler to contribute the nasal "Keep 'em separated" break in "Come Out And Play (Keep 'Em Separated)." Along with the impossibly catchy "Self Esteem," anthem for 98-pound weakling sex addicts everywhere, the hook was responsible for making the aptly titled Smash perhaps the biggest-selling indie release in history.

The closest the Offspring came to this marksman-like humor here is "Beheaded:" "Mommy doesn't have her head anymore / Keep it underneath my bed on the floor / It's alright though, that's okay / She never used it anyway. / Beheaded / Watch you spurt like a garden hose / Bloody mess all over my clothes." Daddy gets similar treatment; maybe the self-esteem problem began with these lyrics.

The band was cited as part of the rebirth of punk, a claim that never rang true with anyone who had experienced punk's scraped-nerve, eye-popping first go-round. This was pop music, new wave-y novelties even. But the songs touched an exposed nerve, if with a joke and a hook instead of a rotten, vicious tirade.

Where the Pistols attacked the Queen and The Clash took on anyone who deserved it, the Offspring's offending "You" is typically a more vague, corporate/government menace. Eleven songs pass in 31:28, with the quasi-surf licks, a lean attack and thoughtful, politically aware lyrics that were an important part of the punk club underground in the late 80s. The band members boast impressive academic credentials, and maybe it takes a quartet of brainy kids to make fun of the world as well as expose it.

Here, the Offspring take on the apathy that produces everything from crappy love affairs to kids dead in the streets and pointless wars. Occasionally, the menace gets way real: in "Out on Patrol," a trapped soldier waits helplessly as the enemy approaches, and "Kill The President" questions the notion of all-powerful leaders in a democracy.

By Ed Hewitt, from Music Wire - December 1995