Destroy Boys

The rowdy Riot Grrrls are ready to knock down barriers with dirty riffs, and they’re unapologetic about their originality. ‘I Threw Glass At My Friend’s Eyes And Now I’m On Probation’ thunders vocalist Alexis Roditis, who unleashes full-on metal roars above Violet Mayugba’s Nirvana-esque guitar. We’re falling in love second-by-second with the post punk wails that underline ‘Fences’, and Destroy Boys prove that they’ve got the skills to match their power stance.

PUP

PUP channel their old school heritage as the spiritual and melodic descendants of Weezer and Pennywise. ‘Morbid Stuff’ captures the crowd with a sun-drenched striking breakdown full of longing before the shouted open-road warmth of ‘Kids’. “We’re just gonna do as much rockin’ as we’re capable of”, Stefan Babcock cautiously promises. But the way ‘Dark Days’ portrays bliss as a passage of time through upbeat harmonies, piercing guitar brightness and thoughtful lyrics, makes this so much more than a “rockin” set from the Canadians. 

Pennywise

Jim Lindberg and the Pennywise guys are suffering from what they call a “heat hangover” following their show in Paris the day before… but if overheating them is what makes them play a set that’s harder and faster than they’ve played in a long time, we’re definitely not going to suggest they chill under the air conditioning anytime soon. A huge outdoor space like this is what their bass boom needs to kick up a circle pit for ‘My Own Country’. ‘Straight Ahead’, their “Floorbanger” throws out heavier riffs than some will remember, and the inflammatory energy of ‘Fuck Authority’ never gets old. Covering NOFX’s ‘Bob’ and Ben E King’s ‘Stand By Me’ offer genius moments for the fans, and there will never be a time we won’t sing our dust-filled lungs out to ‘Bro Hymn’.

Dropkick Murphys

If you think you know Dropkick Murphys, you really don’t when it comes to their 2026 incarnation. Ken Casey, back on frontman duties since 2022, is raging at the state of politics in America, and has channelled his fury into making the Murphys the tightest they’ve ever been. “Our purpose as a band is to travel around and apologise for America’s behaviour… learn from our mistakes, don’t do to yourselves what we did to ourselves!” he yells before ‘First Class Loser’, their novelty song transformed into a diatribe against their Commander-in-Chief.

They’ve become the courageous Johnny Appleseeds of middle-aged resistance, leading us jigging through ‘For The People’ and sending a surfer in a wheelchair flying across the pit to ‘Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya’. Suddenly their fixation on covering Woody Guthrie makes sense when we hear the joyful solidarity of ‘Boundary Line’ dragged into this century, and their cover of The Pogues’ ‘Body Of An American’ forms a perfect tribute to Shane McGowan. Even newcomers to Dropkick Murphys are converted by ‘Rose Tattoo’, and by the time they close with the obligatory ‘I’m Shipping Up To Boston’, we’ve all found our new favourite band. 

The Offspring

The whimsy is gone. The dad jokes are banished. The lightweight hits are there for fan service and breaks only. The Offspring have fully reversed course and become a proper punk band again, and we are ecstatic at their return to the form which catapulted them to fame all those decades ago. Ok, hearing guitarist Noodles shout, “Fuck yeah, Crystal Palace Park,” without a trace of irony is hilarious, but we can forgive him when it sits between a sharp ‘All I Want’ and the choral communion organ intro to ‘Want You Bad’. We don’t need gimmicks when the fun comes from within us; the tick-tock beat of ‘Staring At The Sun’ is an electric twitch to our muscles. Without varnish and with cute harmonies replaced with gang vocals, ‘Make It Alright’ feels so much more real, and Dexter Holland’s gentleness on the chorus is a balm to our sunburnt brains.

We didn’t expect a full Taylor Swift cover or the resulting wall of death for ‘Love Story’, but it absolutely works as a reinvention. The Offspring have discovered that less is more – if you can call a giant inflatable skeleton spewing smoke to ‘Hammerhead’ less, and ‘The Kids Are Alright’ is a perfect evolution of their punk roots. The community that the Offspring have built around themselves is the extra that they needed, and as we grin at Holland wearing an England shirt for a bright, sharp ‘You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid’, we’re struck by just how brilliant they’ve always been. Away from the gloss of the studio and their MTV viral era, they’re a tremendously slick band who have rediscovered how to give us exactly what we want. A note of pity in Holland’s delivery of ‘Self Esteem’ repaints the whole song, giving us the spark we need to shuffle back into the real world. Our faith in punk is fully restored after seeing our favourites give the best show we’ve seen from them in the capital in a long time.

KATE ALLVEY

Photo by Federica Burelli

Let’s get one thing clear: the Offspring are one hell of a punk band. When they drop ‘Come Out and Play’, and Dexter Holland isn’t autotuning his trademark yelp while hiding behind layers of production, they’re easily the equal of “serious” punk bands. A quasi-religious organ intro leads into ‘Want You Bad’ – a solid punk song that, performed live, is fast and direct. When it’s separated from the constant replays, and its place in our collective consciousness, we realise just how much the Offspring can slap when they need to. They take the guitar up on ‘Let The Bad Times Roll’ before letting it slide into an acoustic drop down. Things feels all the more post-apocalyptic as a result, especially when backed by faint, end-of-days organ strains. Giant inflatable skeletons punctuate their whirlpool rendition of ‘Make It All Right’, a maze of vocal harmony and guitar that can absorb you in its prettiness.

The problem the Offspring have always had live, and still haven’t quite solved yet, is how to mitigate their own desire for whimsy. They’ve segregated it into a long middle meander, half-an-hour of jam in the middle of a slam sandwich that takes us through Black Sabbath covers, dad jokes and classical allusions. It would be easy to dismiss this as aging punks being silly, but their love for all things alt pours from each chord. When they drop in ‘Crazy Train’ or Ramones’ ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’, it’s clear how devoted they are to the covers they’re offering. Similarly, rolling on a white piano pouring with dry ice could easily be seen as a Liberace moment, but Holland’s solo ‘Gone Away’ into ‘Hey Jude’ is enough to make the goosebumps rise and the phone lights blink on in the darkness. 

‘Why Don’t You Get A Job?’ thunders us into the home stretch. Sounding like a party demo, the layers of memory strip away to reveal how it must have appeared on first hearing. With beach balls, giant animated shrimp and lyrics on the screens, this is now the Offspring’s ‘Sweet Caroline’ moment. ‘Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)’ has metamorphosed too, their tone now paternal towards the misguided protagonist, before we’re swept into an incredibly tight ‘Self Esteem’ that feels like it should be on a gritty superhero movie soundtrack. 

The big reveal as they leave, of course, is that they’ll be back in London next summer to play a park show, but that doesn’t mean tonight is just an advert. The Offspring might be older, but they’ve doubled down on what made them so compelling in the first place. They’re making slick, cross-generational punk that relies on the core of their sound to speak for itself without using their mainstream stardom as a crutch, and we’re all the better for experiencing a show of this calibre.

Kate Allvey

Photo: Tijs van Leur

There’s much more sweetness in their take on romance from the guys who wrote incel anthem ‘Self Esteem’. Both the figureheads of the Offspring are fathers multiple times over and in stable marriages, so it makes sense that their sound has moved on too from the angst of their early days, in the same way the fanbase who skated to their tunes as teens now are of the right age to have also settled down. Headline single ‘Make It All Right’ launched at the same time as their Download appearance and is the definition of ‘cuteness’, from the playful backing down to the overwhelming message of ‘let’s just run away and listen to punk rock, okay?’. It’s also very slow by the Offspring’s standards, and very simple. There’s  little twiddling from the guy who earned the nickname ‘Noodles’ for a reason, and it soars when it needs to. ‘OK But This Is The Last Time’ continues in this vein; direct, easy to get into, a love song for the day after you’ve had a disagreement with the person you’ve already been in love with for a lifetime. Both songs are endearing and feel right for where both the average Offspring fan and the band themselves are in their lives. 

They haven’t completely mellowed though. The Offspring in 2024 are as technically complex and professional as ever, their songs packed with air-guitar potential. There’s always been a hidden anger when we look at each album as a whole though: it’ll trundle along nicely, then you’ll hear a biting lyric about domestic violence and realise that under all that production, they are raging. That quality hasn’t entirely dissipated with age, thankfully. ‘Truth In Fiction’ is a Bad Religion song in all but name (in fact, a quick google was required to make sure this wasn’t a Graffin cover). It’s short, rapid, and follows the model of quick fire political monologue with ambitious bass and a bucketload of thrashing that we love from the aforementioned other punk band.

The ‘classic’ Offspring sound is showcased on ‘Light It Up’, which could have come from any of their last records and has the quintessential layering of everything they’ve got with the social commentary in an AABB rhyme scheme that we love from them. The only point where there’s some joking around is ‘Come To Brazil’, a tribute to the enthusiastic demands for shows from their South American fans. With lyrics detailing the tourist highlights of Brazil, and a stomping, power metal energy that switches to a football chant, you can forgive this song for being the obvious novelty track when you know it will absolutely go off when it’s played in Rio. 

‘Supercharged’ isn’t going to win the Offspring new fans, but that’s not really the point of this record. It’s a warmhearted album for the legions of Original Pranksters who grew up with their records, a comfortable celebration of commercial punk stalwarts doing what they do best. If you remember watching Holland hang glide into the street on the ‘Why Don’t You Get A Job’ video, then this is for you.

KATE ALLVEY

Words: Kate Allvey.  Images: Penny Bennett

Bambie Thug

Wreathed in black latex tentacles, the Irish vocalist opens the second day of Download with seductive, evil ‘ouija pop’. They’re like a possessed Lady Gaga, spilling musical ink on ‘Last Summer (I Know What You Did)’, and if you had guessed that a sexy bin man costume would feature somewhere over the weekend, you’d be proven right during hypnotic new track ‘Trash Will Take Itself Out’. But the magic happens in their almost un-backed cover of the Cranberries ‘Zombie’; flanked by flags of the oppressed held in silence, it’s clear that’s there’s so much more to Bambie Thug than nudity and Eurovision.

Florence Black

As the first act of the day to fall victim to the curse of a shortened set due to apocalyptic weather conditions, we sadly don’t get much of the welsh act’s bass-heavy hard rock sound, but the five songs we receive are as dark as their name. Tristan Thomas’ heartfelt wail makes the cliched metal horns he conjures up feel necessary throughout their Pearl Jam influenced set, and ‘Sun And Moon’ slips down as easily as a scotch at midnight. We’re left simultaneously frustrated and grateful for the brief snippet we did get to see. 

Bleed From Within

The faithful brave an extra half an hour wait in the downpour for the Scottish metallers, but ‘Sovereign’s essential burst of brutality makes the discomfort worth it. We needed something heavier and tougher, richer in ferocious guitar to bolster our spirits, and we got it and then some. ’Stand Down’ sends a connection flooding through the crowd all the way to the back, and vocalist Scott Kennedy grins at our response. Closing with a heartwarming and fan-pleasing rendition of Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’, they’re joined by Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan who’ve been filming onsite.

Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes

The frontman knows both how to construct a belting setlist and how to rock a fuzzy pink cardigan, and the huge crowd response to ‘Kitty Sucker’ shows just how comfortable he’s become in his rock n roll status. The lounger tracks which featured heavily on his last tour are thrown out in favour of the rangers which showcase Carter at his best like ‘Devil Inside Me’, though strategically placed slower tracks move us. “What it takes to be a main stage band? Confidence, power, kindness and love,” he lists before the impassioned ‘Brambles’s slinky beat booms out. Sadly, this makes a small boy in the audience cry, and Carter pauses the song to console him (“Little man’s tired… I don’t blame him, I’m tired too!”). ‘My Town’ hits heavier live, with tons more electro to console even the most weary, leaving us both in awe of the Rattlesnakes’ sound and energised to continue.

Babymetal

Handmade t-shirts and fervent hype surrounded the Japanese girl group, but their hyper-energetic routines angered whichever deity controls the weather in Derbyshire. After only one song, a look of panic flashed across leader Su-Metal’s face as she received a message in her earpiece, and the dreaded ‘we are pausing the show briefly’ message displayed onscreen as the weather turned biblical. However, the ladies are nothing if not consummate professionals, and as soon as it was safe to do so, ‘METALI!!’ proved that they are the holographic dressed superheroes that we need to push through the day. ‘RATATATA’ is an absolute banger live and the closest we would come to seeing Electric Callboy this weekend. It felt like as soon as Babymetal appeared, they were gone.

Enter Shikari

There’s a reason Enter Shikari sold out stadiums across Europe earlier this year. Glitching between poetry, dance grooving, eighties vibes and nineties optimism, they perfectly capture the escapism of the weekend. ‘Giant Pacific Octopus (I Don’t Know You Any More)’ is melancholy and bold, opening a thoughtful pit that embraces the message of the song. Frontman Rou Reynolds paces like a caged tiger; “This was the first festival that ever allowed us to play, back in 2006” he yells before turning the bass up to absolute limits for ‘goldfish’s intense drops after dreamlike soft bridges that weigh heavy with longing. Enter Shikari lean into the drum n bass end of their sound for shows like this because it absolutely works for huge crowds, and ‘Sorry, You’re Not a Winner’ playfully extends the electro side of the band like an outstretched hand, inviting us to dance. 

  While She Sleeps

“I’ve been here before, I’ve been stood where you is,” pants Loz Taylor between songs, and it’s the solidarity and empathy between While She Sleeps and their fans which make them such a great live act. With neon guitars blaring on opener ‘RAINBOWS’, they’re the perfect transition to the evening after Enter Shikari. “We did not come here to fuck about,” says Taylor sternly, and he’s determined to cram every minute allotted for his band with  vital honesty and the kind of songs that create slamming all the way up to the top of the hill. ‘SELF HELL’ burns with rage and mutual frustration to provoke a massive, bouncing response that we yell back to the band mid air. 

The Offspring

One of the oldest bands on the bill, the Offspring have been known to let their tendency towards bad puns and novelty skits get in the way of their sound. Not so today. Noodles, Dexter and friends plot a tight course, barely deviating from faultless punk and proving that they are so much more than the guys who asked us why we were still unemployed. New song ‘Make It All Right’ is a burst of summer fun that bodes very well for their upcoming album, and ‘The Kids Aren’t Alright’s eulogy to the loss of childhood dreams captures just the right balance of poignancy and thrashing. ‘Hit That’ sparks conga lines and even the most hardened types chant out the melody while coloured balloons bounce like weightless marbles over the pit.

Billy Talent

The spiky Canadians put out seriously classy proto-emo from the get-go with ‘Devil in a Midnight Mass’ dropping bombs of distortion amid Benjamin Kowalewicz’s trademark steel wire vocals. Their potent dark energy is the antidote to the Offspring’s jollier hits we hear spilling over from the Apex stage. ’This Suffering’ is like a midnight hedge maze, it’s tone providing a taut atmosphere that cracks before ‘I Beg To Differ (This Will Get Better)’s brightening guitar. Kowalewicz theatrically emotes, aware he’s got a dedicated audience in the palm of his hand during the derelict loveliness of ‘Rusted From The Rain’, and Billy Talent’s set has to be a highlight of the weekend for pretty much everyone who rushed over to the Avalanche stage.

Fall Out Boy

It’s deceptively easy to get to the front for Fall Out Boy’s chronologically curated set, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t the star attractions of the day, if not the whole weekend. The Teenage remembrances and sizzling solos of ‘Grand Theft Autumn’ give way to fireworks and picture frames as, word perfect, we sing along to ‘Sugar, We’re Going Down’, our inconveniences fading away. ‘Dance Dance’ tugs on our sense of nostalgia, but with a slight roughness and friction to dispel the gloss of memory and shake us in the present. Pete Wentz shreds like we never remembered him being able to, smiling broadly between frequent costume changes. “I want you to sing till your lungs give out,” he calls, and we nearly do to the perfect showmanship and bass drops of ‘This Ain’t A Scene, It’s an Arms Race’.

If there was a prize for ‘maximum spectacle achieved in an hour at Download’, Fall Out Boy would take the gold. ‘My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark’ sees guitars re-made into flamethrowers at the centre of walls of pyromania, and the troupe of sinister cheerleaders onstage for ‘Uma Thurman’ signals the start of a clear ramping up of the effects on the songs without cult-favourite status. It’s not just all shock and awe, though. Wentz helps a couple with their gender revel via waterproof envelope and declares they should name their baby ‘Download’. After ten years away from Donington, Fall Out Boy wanted to ‘make the biggest art project we could fucking make’, and they made it happen in a huge way.

Click the below image for the full ‘Download Festival – Saturday’ gallery

Rather than resting on their laurels and living out the rest of their careers as a nostalgia act, as easy as it could have been for them, the gang have regrouped with super producer Bob Rock and signed to a new label to create a back to basics approach, with some unexpected curve balls thrown in for better or worse (let’s also try and forget last year’s Tiger King cover). Leading the band as always, Frontman Dexter Holland and guitarist Noodles have overcome an array of personal and legal challenges as well as lineup changes, resulting in a collection of old school thrillers.

Wasting no time, The Offspring transport themselves in time as the title track’s early noughties melodic so-cal vibe could have soundtracked thousands of crash and burn moments on Crazy Taxi and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. ‘Army of One’ also provides a raw, no thrills assault, which goes hand in hand with Holland’s sharp as ever lyrics, snapping each song with equal parts social commentary and his classic warped sense of humour.

Not as self deprecating as Blink-182 or Weezer, and nowhere near as morbid as Alkaline Trio, The Offspring land in slightly darker middle-ground than their Bart Simpson comedy riddled younger selves. The bleakness of ‘The Opioid Diaries’ stands out as the album’s most fleshed out song, even with a mildly simple message of the American crisis and opioid dependency, with critical swipes like “Now we’ve made a nation full of kids on dope. They’re looking down now at the end of their rope.”

Elsewhere, complete with a jazzy bass intro, ‘Never Have Sex Anymore’ marks the band’s obnoxious tendencies but with a matured touch. ‘Coming For You’ features an eighties metal stomp that Bob Rock’s production style is synonymous with, as bass player Todd Morse performs his finest Motley Crue impression. Unfortunately, fans would have heard it for the first six years ago when it was originally released. Why it’s been placed on this album still is anyone’s guess.

Amongst these quick-fire melodic punk anthems is more unnecessary wastage that feel and sound like nothing more than attempts of dragging out what could have been a classic EP into a charlatan’s excuse of a full length album. A random ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ interlude is a bewildering addition but at least it shows off Noodles guitar chops. Perhaps it’s the band’s idea of being out of the box. Ultimately a pointless piano led rendition of their 1997 fan favourite ‘Gone Away’ and a bizarre lullaby style reprise closes the album on more a whimper than the inspired bang the band were likely gunning for.

Still far away from the heights of Smash (it’s been almost thirty years, get over it), but they can be razor sharp when they want to be; ‘Let The Bad Times Roll’ has the hooks and unforgettable melodies that are synonymous with The Offspring in their prime days and there’s enough of Noodles’ trademark so-cal guitar throttling to whet your appetite for their unadulterated punk rock. It’s just a shame that after so many years, so much more was expected from what is a release half empty with either time wasting or plain laziness. Perhaps they should stick to the nostalgia if this and Joe Exotic tributes are all they’re prepared to offer for another ten years.

LOUIS KERRY

The record will be released on the 8th December and can be pre-ordered here.

The band are expected to be releasing their upcoming yet to be titled tenth album next year. It will follow up 2012’s ‘Days Go By’ on Columbia Records.

The comp will feature ten songs, including two new tracks and is available on 10″ vinyl exclusively at a merch stand at the Slovenian Festival, which takes place from the 7th to the 11th August. This year’s bill features the likes of The Offspring, Pennywise, Propagandhi and more. For more info, go to the festival website.

“We love ‎Sharknado‬. We love The Dickies. So we thought it would be fun to record our own version of The Dickies’ ‘Gigantor‬’ for the new movie Sharknado: The 4th Awakens,” the band revealed on Facebook.

The movie airs on the 31st July. Watch the trailer, soundtracked by The Offspring, below.

Tickets for the shows, taking place in Birmingham, Glasgow and London, go on sale this Friday [19th February] at 9AM.

JUNE
19 BIRMINGHAM O2 Academy
20 GLASGOW O2 Academy
22 LONDON Eventim Apollo Hammersmith

The Offspring have released a video for their new single. ‘Coming For You’ is available digitally now.