Review Summary: No need to ask and no need to care, yeah.
Here's something interesting I recently learned about Dexter Holland, frontman for The Offspring. In an interview he had with Bravo, circa 1995, he claimed: "I won’t wanna play music when I’m forty, I’d rather be a professor at a university," with a noted interest in biochemistry and molecular biology. Now this is interesting for a number of reasons. Not only does this bring to light the more studious side of the man - a side you probably wouldn't associate with or expect from a punk artist - it shows an interesting level of maturity and foresight. Punk rock and pop punk are very 'young' genres, pop punk in particular being emblematic of rebellious youth and teenage angst. Bands in this subculture have a limited lifespan as a result of this youthful image that the genre has - some of them wisely call it quits once they reach their "twilight years" (probably their late 30's or so), like Yellowcard, but some of them keep going and become somewhat irrelevant as a result. Blink-182, Green Day, Jimmy Eat World: all of these bands' time in the sun have just passed already. And while it's admirable that they're still trying to make the music that defined them and put them on the map to begin with, one has to wonder: why? Why not move on and experiment with a genre that will make you seem less... dated? Perhaps this is one of the pitfalls with getting into a "youthful" genre like pop punk to begin with - you get so used to crafting material within that genre's sphere of influence that you're musically unequipped for when your shelf life inevitably ends. Holland seemed to have realized this from a pretty early age. And to his credit, he actually went on to get a
doctorate.
But, at the same time, he and the aging boys decided to keep making music. And unfortunately, this resulted in
Let the Bad Times Roll, a truly miserable and tone-deaf record with an album title that really just says it all. The jokes write themselves. Now, I wouldn't classify myself as an Offspring fan - too much mediocre material in the 2000's and beyond, methinks. I really liked
Americana (and
Ignition to a lesser extent), "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" is a pleasant little butt-rock Internet anthem, and as a kid, I always enjoyed hearing "Way Down The Line" and the untouchable "All I Want" pop up while blazing through Crazy Taxi. But that's the extent of my love for the band. They were never my cup of punk rock tea, and even so, I felt a wave of disappointment crash over me when I heard album opener "This Is Not Utopia" all the same, with the one-two punch of the track's godawful hook - "the ROOTS, the ROOTS" - and the god-
awful production hitting me like a nasty headache. The production on
Let the Bad Times Roll is horrendous - everything is over-compressed to hell, causing the instruments and arrangements to blend together into a singular, amorphous pile of noise. The effects and EQ on Dexter's voice sound particularly miserable - he's always in front of the mix, the instruments left so far behind in the background that it often sounds like he's singing over a karaoke track. It all sounds like Bob Rock going back to his roots - the roots - and harkening back to the
St. Anger days that nobody wanted in the first place.
Even disregarding the blatantly unpolished and unfinished production job on this record, the songs are quite bad regardless. There's a laziness that permeates throughout the entire album the band never manages to shake. "Coming For You" is a banal slab of commercial-bait pop rock that blatantly rips off The Black Keys, "Army of One" is a speedy, Rise Against-ish bit of filler that coasts by on a repetitive vocal melody and an eyeroll-inducing 'anthemic' chorus, there's a random and pretentious cover of "In The Hall of the Mountain King" that's a propos of absolutely nothing and serves no purpose other than to pad out the runtime, and "We Never Have Sex Anymore" is-- f*ck, what am I saying, just look at that title, it literally speaks for itself. Perhaps most insulting is this random piano cover of "Gone Away", one of the band's finest 90's jams with a
killer hook and a grunge-y energy that's absolutely nowhere to be found on this cheesy Aerosmith-meets-Steve Conte ballad, a ballad that's almost harmlessly decent until the Oscarbait strings come swooping in. What was the point of this? To fill out the runtime? To remind people of when The Offspring was actually good? A mix of both? Regardless of intention, "Gone Away (But Lame)" sticks out like a sore thumb of apathy and laziness on an album that was already struggling to give a damn in the first place.
There are moments of decency on this record that help save it from being a complete slog. "Breaking These Bones" captures the rollicking and melodic energy of the band's
Americana days fairly effectively, the urgency and breakneck pace of "The Opioid Diaries" breathes some genuine punk-rock life into the record, and the title track is a surprisingly decent take on a more alternative, Fall Out Boy-esque sound - it particularly sounds a lot like "Thanks For The Memories" with its dichotomy between Spanish-derived acoustic sections and more syncopated, staccato-centric verses. But there's something particularly sad about the title track - they're better at emulating someone else's style than they are at emulating their
own.
Say what you will about the nature of aging rockstars, but that's no excuse to make garbage music, and
Let the Bad Times Roll is garbage music. It's not
horrendous per se - most of it is tepid and inoffensive, like a collection of unremarkable B-Sides or a compilation of the boring filler from better albums. The only objectively
awful aspect of the album - besides "We Never Have Sex Anymore" - is the grating, tinny production. But honestly, tone-deaf blandness and derivative nonsense are not only completely unnecessary, but disappointing coming from a band whose best cuts have not only stood the test of time but helped define the sound of 90's punk. Sure, basically everything after
Americana has been pretty hit-or-miss, but there's something about
Let the Bad Times Roll that just falls flat and dies on arrival. Perhaps it's the fact that after nine years' time, the only thing they have to show for their almost decade-long absence is a collection of bargain-bin songs you've already forgotten about.