“This time we thought we could make it bigger and better without really changing it.” “When we (originally) recorded it, it was super on-the-fly – we probably only spent, like, three hours doing the whole song,” Holland explains. We thought it was worth another look.” The new version sounds far cleaner than its grimy original, a product of more time spent in the studio. “But it was always one of those songs that kept on coming up. “Every time we tried to play ‘Dirty Magic,’ five people would jump up and down and the rest of the audience was scratching their heads,” says Holland. In addition to playing the record in its entirety at recent concerts, they also re-recorded one of its standout tracks, “Dirty Magic.” This year marks the 20th anniversary of the band’s sophomore release, Ignition. The new album, as Holland notes, allowed the band – which includes guitarist Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman, bassist Greg “Greg K.” Kriesel and its newest addition, drummer Pete Parada – to take risks while also serving as a mechanism to toast their history. I knew it could go one of two ways – either it’s gonna get better ’cause we’re more comfortable working with each other, or sometimes you get too comfortable and nobody listens to each other anymore.” He pauses. “We didn’t know each other before the last record, but it went really well, so we thought we’d try it again.

“He’s such a great producer,” Holland says. One key element of Rise and Fall did carry over: the band again worked with veteran producer Bob Rock (Aerosmith, Metallica).

“We’ve got to mix it up just to keep it entertaining for ourselves.” “I always felt like we would be bored if we had a similar style from record to record,” Holland says, referencing the album’s sharp contrast to the band’s previous release, 2008’s Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace. But it also takes sharp left turns: album cuts veer from whiplash-punk (“Secrets from the Underground”) to riff-rock (“Days Go By”), reggae (“OC Guns”) and harmonized pop (“Cruising California (Bumping in My Truck)”). “It was really cool to say ‘Hey, fuck it.'”ĭays Go By, due next Tuesday, retains the band’s classic punk-rock vibe. “It was a really good experience feeling like we could bring anything to the table,” the singer says of the multi-year recording process that resulted in the band’s diverse ninth studio release, Days Go By. But now, as frontman Dexter Holland tells Rolling Stone, checking in by phone from Amsterdam, the Orange County punk rockers have no problem throwing caution to the wind. On their earliest recordings, the Offspring worried about varying genres within a single album.

The offspring days go by