Offspring Say New Album “Days Go By” Has “Message Of Hope”

Huntington Beach’s punk rock icons the Offspring, have celebrated almost three decades as a band, from their start as Manic Subsidal to their current status as music industry mainstays.

The four-piece punk powerhouse played an intoxicated, but lively small gig at Alex’s Bar in Long Beach which they followed up with KROQ/Los Angeles’ Weenie Roast y Fiesta where they rocked the main stage.

With a few near-faultless gigs in their system and an upcoming tour, Offspring is now prepping to release their ninth studio album, Days Go By, this June 26th on Columbia Records. Frontman Dexter Holland said in an interview that on this ninth record, the band is going to “dig a little bit deeper, and that’s what we want to do as well.”

Holland talked Days Go By with Rolling Stone a few days before the Weenie Roast y Fiesta. It’s been four years since Offspring’s last record and the band has been together for a long time.

“You can really let the numbers get to you. We were playing at a 21-and-over place last night, so that means some of those people [could] have been one year old when this record came out,” said Holland.”But you can’t think about that stuff too much. We still enjoy what we’re doing and I feel like it was yesterday.”

Holland also said that the band is “down to try different things musically” and that the record they’re “doing now is very different from what we did then.”

“This is our ninth record, so we’ve got to dig a little bit deeper, and that’s what we want to do as well,” explained Holland. “I think music is so diverse today and bands are so diverse. If you were a rock band in the Eighties, you kind of had to stick to one thing. Now, in this age of Coachella and European festivals and stuff, it’s kind of anything goes, so that allowed us to try different things.”

“I know no one’s gonna buy our album, but I still spend two years trying to make a great record,” Holland continued.”If you’re in a band, if it’s really what you care about, then that stuff isn’t what’s important. You can’t help the fact that you’ve got to make something great; it’s got to be sequenced right, no matter what.”

More so than anything else with their music, Holland said that the Offspring are trying to impart a message through their music. He gave an example with “Days Go By.”

“Part of why I chose ‘Days Go By’ as the single and the title of the album is because it really kind of shows – not only with me – that the world has been through a sh**ty few years and it’s been really tough on a lot of people,” Holland explained. “People have really gotten hurt and, at the end of the day, no one’s gonna pick you up.”

“You’ve gotta pick yourself up and figure out how to move on. So I guess acknowledging that it’s been tough, but also having a message of hope, is what I really wanted people to take away from this record.”

–Nadia Noir, CBS Radio Los Angeles