The Offspring
Let The Bad Times Roll

"If we are all destined for hell, then it's better to arrive there dancing." I don't remember the source of this quote, it's also likely I just coined a new aphorism, but in any case, it's more or less how I imagine The Offspring's approach to their thirteenth album, nine years after the more than negligible "Days Go By" and just a few turns away from the remarkable milestone of forty years of career.
Yes, because the gestation of "Let The Bad Times Roll" was anything but a walk in the park for a band that's long given the impression of just wanting to get by, between the risk of the label's failure and the departure of co-founder Greg Kriesel (it seems Dexter Holland and Noodles royally screwed him over with royalties lately, and he didn't take it well), but all this must have provoked something more than a slight tickle to these original pranksters, judging by how they take the piss. At themselves.

Because for the rest of the circuit, however, two years of rumors about The Offspring's return to the scene have just seemed like a continuous sigh to correct the calendar reminder for an only hypothesized date that no one really cares about, kept in minimal regard more for a gesture owed to what the band was than out of respect for its residual dimension.
On the eve of the album's release, the publication of the homonymous single did nothing but crystallize the perplexities as they have always been, as if the general consensus was already that The Offspring remain far from how we like to remember them and that at this point, there's not much to be really enthusiastic about.

If there's a positive note that can be pointed out to the Garden Grove champions, it's that in this "Let The Bad Times Roll" they sound consistent with what they are. Flattering notes up to a certain extent, clearly, but it's in the moments where the course correction of the album seems more urgent than ever that they offer their most peculiar sound. That's it. End of arguments. A credit to the solidity of the sound rather than to the particular interpretation of The Offspring.

Even considering the modern incarnation of a band that on paper would have acquired absolute top-tier additional values like Pete Parada (Face To Face, Saves The Day) and Todd Morse (H2O, Juliette And The Licks), the thing is relatively surprising: "Let The Best Times Roll" might also mean a relative step forward compared to what came before (in the recent history of someone who can boast the absolute record of copies sold with an independent label, we're talking prehistory), but it reflects on itself from the first to the last second of listening, and that's that.

Even wanting to necessarily recognize to Dexter & Co. the merit of having introduced an entire generation to punk revival, knowing that they barely adhere to the bare minimum might prove quite frustrating for the same followers: The Offspring's legacy continues to resist longevity, the strange, irregular peak of quality, and nothing more.