The Offspring

After five years of silence and a somewhat conciliatory greatest hits compilation ...Rage and Grace asserts itself in only 43 seconds, when the heated double-time sprint of "Half-Truism" transforms into a brilliant, head-banging chug under skyscraping choruses. Tunes like "Trust In You" and "Nothingtown" might not show a second coming -- they're nearly exact replicas of the band's smart aleck skate punk from the late '90s -- but Offspring still define the genre.

If you only remember the Offspring as pop-punk jokesters — SoCal boys who quip about
clueless white guys — then the band's rather serious eighth album may surprise you. Over
hardcore-punk grooves and a mess of guitar wreckage, the multiplatinum quartet deliver
their thesis: "Stuff is messed up." That's the title of the ninth track — a smorgasbord of
carping on which frontman Dexter Holland disses the media, the Iraq War, realit... More >