Play the Song, Buy the Album

I have a few CDs by The Offspring, though I'm not a completist. They get a lot of radio play, but in truth it has always been video games that have driven me to their music. Or more accurately, I have driven to their music, because that old classic Crazy Taxi is where I really was first exposed to the band. I ended up buying their album, "Ixnay on the Hombre," as a result.

With that catchy song "Hammerhead" now a downloadable song in Rock Band, I was pushed to checking out their latest album, "Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace." This sort of cross-promotion is exactly what they're after, I know. I'm corporate America's bitch in this story. But the point is, this is another really good album.

Hammerhead is a wonderfully subversive track in which the heroic Iraq soldier you're imagining the character to be turns out to be a deluded school kid on a shooting spree. And the rest of the album is a very refreshing blend of styles.

There are a few songs firmly in the high octane "heavy punk" (if you will) genre they're most known for: "Half-Truism" and "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" are particularly good.

There are a couple of slower songs that land some genuine tender emotion, "Kristy, Are You Doing Okay?" and "Fix You."

There's the scathing "Stuff is Messed Up," an hysterical "album cover friendly" rendering of what the actual song lyric is.

Not too many of the other songs jump out at me, but neither do I find myself skipping over them. It's a solid album of "threes" and "fours" (out of five) with a couple "fives" and not a single "one" or "two" in the bunch. I'd rate it a B+.