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It's not that the Offspring sound behind the times on their eighth album, Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace--it's that they sound disconnected from it.
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There are potent moments like the rise-and-fall ballad 'Kristy, Are You Doing Okay?' and the fierce 'Nothingtown,' but 'Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace' sounds more like a tentative step in the Offspring's new direction.
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The album tends to sag in the middle, and as for those gentler moments, well, one for two isn't bad ('Kristi, Are You Doing Okay?' is OK).
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Sounding closer to their more earnest Smash days, the songs are snappy to-the-point SoCal punk, albeit with a more polished sheen.
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The album's latter half contains some welcome pop moments--'Nothingtown' and 'Let's Hear It for Rock Bottom' make going nowhere in life sound like hot fun--but the standout melodies often take a back seat to the diatribes, and Holland doesn't back up his disaffection with many good reasons to rally behind him.
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This misguided eagerness to please is endemic throughout the album’s 12 tracks, from the appropriation of other artists’ styles (the chunky riffing and brutish vocals of ‘Hammerhead’ are reminiscent of Dave Grohl, while closer ‘Rage And Grace’ is a transparent attempt to recreate the vitality of Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’) to Holland’s equally unrelatable lyrics.
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UncutFive years in gestation, these revved-up anthems are fuctional enough, but none have the catchy ska-punk bounce of the band's late 1990s commercial peak. [Sep 2008, p.99]
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The patchwork of styles thrown around here distracts you from the album's strengths.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 66 out of 87
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Mixed: 14 out of 87
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Negative: 7 out of 87
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MislavF.Aug 12, 2008
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Feb 4, 2021This album is pretty good. I like how the band doesn't really take themselves seriously and they know who they are and what they do. It's just fun.
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Jan 19, 2021