The Offspring: Rise & Fall, Rage & Grace Review

The Offspring's latest album Rise & Fall, Rage & Grace has a typical pop punk theme - the world sucks, our culture sucks, and the government sucks. Unfortunately, the modern pop punk side comes out a bit too much.

Even though pop punk appears to be a rather immature genre, The Offspring have clearly displayed that they have matured with their older age. They have abandoned the childish humor of "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" and "Original Prankster" and have opted for a more serious tone. With that maturity, the band went as far as recording a ballad with "Kristy, Are You Doing OK?" Singer Dexter Holland's voice on the track sounds overly nasally and at times can be reminiscent of whiny emo vocals.

Rise & Fall, Rage Grace, has its moments but for the most part the album is pretty forgettable. It suffers from many of the flaws of modern pop punk; the sound is completely recyclable. In fact, numerous riffs sound oddly similar to that of Green Day's, for example: "Nothingtown" and "Fix You." Rise & Fall, Rage & Grace doesn't bring anything new to the table, it sounds like any other recycled pop punk album on the market, and if it came down to it, I may give it a bit of an edge over the competition which is vastly horrendous. The Offspring had their niche in the mid 90s and were able to keep strong up to and including Conspiracy of One, but their uniqueness has quickly dissipated. One, because band after band have worked to recreate The Offspring's sound, and two, because it's a genre of music which breeds mediocrity, and mediocre is exactly what this album sounds like.

Grace: C