The Timely Return Of Pop-punk Veterans The Offspring

As pop-punk makes a resurgence in this peri-pandemic age, it seems only right that The Offspring have picked this time to drop their first album in 9 years, appropriately titled Let the Bad Times Roll. Plus, they've also announced that they are set to hit the road with The Hives in November, touring across the UK and Ireland.

We can't help but feel extreme late-90s-early-00s nostalgia with the return of The Offspring; a feeling that's only heightened with the likes of Machine Gun Kelly's pop-punk album Tickets To My Downfall, not to mention Yungblud, Travis Mills and Nick Gross' new project Girlfriends, and Avril Lavigne's collaboration with Mod Sun Flames.

It was bands like The Offspring and Green Day that spawned the mainstream pop-punk bands of the 2000s, with the former's fifth album Americana reaching number 2 in the US charts thanks to hit songs like Pretty Fly (For a White Guy) and Why Don't You Get a Job?. Following that came blink-182's Enema of the State in 1999, Sum 41's iconic first singles Fat Lip and In Too Deep, before Avril Lavigne brought female artists to the fore with 2002's Let Go featuring the unbelievably catchy Sk8er Boi.

Bands like Fall Out Boy, Paramore and My Chemical Romance brought forth the emo era of pop-punk, and it's a blend of that skate-punk/emo aesthetic that some artists are trying to recapture today. It did continue somewhat into the 2010s, but aside from 5 Seconds of Summer and Neck Deep, few new bands of the genre managed to gain traction.

You can blame TikTok for bringing back soundtracks of All Time Low, Simple Plan and Paramore, or you can blame Machine Gun Kelly who released Tickets To My Downfall after spending a lot of time with Yungblud and blink-182's Travis Barker - bpth of whom seem to have also had an effect on Halsey, who collaborated with the pair on 2019's 11 Minutes and with MGK on Forget Me Too from his album. Even Demi Lovato dipped her toes into pop-punk waters with her remix of All Time Low's Monsters featuring Blackbear.

It only spells good prospects for The Offspring's Let the Bad Times Roll which has been in production since 2013 but now sees the band with both a new bassist and a new label.

Let the Bad Times Roll will be released on April 16th 2021 through Concord Records.

Tour Dates:
21st November - 3Arena - Dublin
23rd November - Motorpoint Arena - Cardiff
24th November - Resorts World Arena - Birmingham
26th November - The SSE Wembley Arena - London
27th November - The SSE Hydro - Glasgow
29th November - AO Arena - Manchester
30th November - First Direct Arena - Leeds