Holland’s voice sounds surprisingly good and energetic already showing much improvement over his performances on Splinter. They jump right in with the opener Half-Truism, easily a memorable song with its chugging guitar and extremely catchy chorus.

This time around the veteran punksters ditch the pointless intros that have appeared on some of their previous releases and waste no time getting to the music. This is true, satisfying Offspring that kicks off the new album really nicely. Hammerhead is placed at the beginning of Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace along side three other similar tracks of its kind that seem to be very serious and emotional while at the same time hard rocking and punky. shows off his bass playing in a grasping switch in tempo towards the end of the song. Dexter Holland spits out fine lyrics about war while Greg K. Hammerhead is a real hard rock song with a heavy drumbeat and a catchy chorus. When I first heard Hammerhead, the new single from the album, I was satisfied, not too amazed, but happy to hear that The Offspring were on the right track. Those tracks are the ones that set this new album apart from any previous one by The Offspring, and they, I must say, are rather disappointing. On Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace we find that there are some real classic Offspring punk songs, there are some average sounding ones, and than finally, there are the slow, deeply emotional tracks. So does this mean all twelve of the tracks are catchy Offspring signature punk rock tunes combined with a little extra emotion than usual? No, actually it doesn’t. The number of joke songs on Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace is a big zero. It is possible, from reading the very meaningful title and looking at that dark cover, that without even hearing Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace, you have already surmised that this is a more serious and deeply emotional record and that it doesn’t contain any silly songs. Now if you think about that title for a minute (ya, its basically stolen from the Foo Fighters) and then look at that album artwork (it actually doesn’t have a skull on it) you can probably guess some things already about this album.

Since then, they’ve come out with Splinter, a fair album that sported some good heavier punk songs but was ruined by crappy silly ones, and now, five years later, Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace. It’s hard for me to believe that Americana is already ten years behind them and the pop punk piece of poo Conspiracy of One is a long eight. It has been long enough since The Offspring released a new album.

Review Summary: Probably The Offspring's best effort in ten years, but that's not saying too much.

The offspring hammerhead