The Offspring
Days Go By

I had left the Offspring several years ago with a tentative yet sufficient "Splinter" and I find them again in 2012 with a controversial work like "Days Go By".

I wouldn't even know how to define the Offspring of the third millennium, they are certainly no longer attributable to a single thread like they were during the times of their famous mid-nineties hits. What is certain, however, is their ability to self-erect, climb the tower, and then plunge down headfirst. The thesis that they do it for fun does not hold.

Half a good album, half to forget. Why not make an EP at this point? We would have avoided writing that the Offspring sometimes have poor taste that even Green Day can't have.

Let's hold tight on the tower with "Secret from the underground" (perhaps the best), the opener, and "Diving by zero" (which seems to come out from the fury of 1994). Something else decent can be found in "Hurting as one" and "Slim pickens does the right thing". "Turning into you" is sufficient although you can feel the strong scent of Rise Against.

Off the tower goes the entire central part of the album, except for that "Dirty Magic" revisited exactly twenty years later which will make old fans' eyes shine, only to make them curse in growl seeing it juxtaposed with the summer pornography of the '80s of "CC" (is there a need to go beyond the initials?). "O. C. guns" instead almost evokes tenderness or compassion? It's unclear.
Regarding "I wanna secret family (with you), Dexter should call Billie Joe at meal times to get lessons on how to compose a decent radio-ballad that sells.

Advice: take the scalpel, operate, then sew, keep the 5/6 good things, add the EP label next to the album, or use a marker and pretend nothing happened.
Amen

PS: the cover, however, is beautiful in its entirety. As long as no one embroiders an anthropo-philosophical treatise on age to cover anything else.

Score: 6