The Offspring Are Ready To Return To Australia, "Supercharged"

“Once you have something you love taken away from you, you appreciate it so much more when you get it back.”

It’s a sentiment likely everyone has felt at some point across the last four years. For artists, at any stage of their journey, the pandemic really forced perspective when it came to their overall connection to their work and the desire to continue creating or understandably, an urge to pivot away from the art itself.

The Offspring – ‘You Can’t Get There From Here’

It was a rollercoaster time for everyone who experienced lockdown, yet navigating through such a time of unpredictability has bred a new sense of resilience and rejuvenation into many artists and their work.

The Offspring are most definitely an example of such energy.

Releasing their first studio album in nine years with 2021’s Let The Bad Times Roll, the SoCal punk rock icons served up a record that reminded new and old fans alike that The Offspring hadn’t lost any of the cheek or charisma that had marked their earlier material.

Bursting forth with vibrancy, the album put The Offspring firmly back on radars where they belonged and for the band, it reinforced their own chemistry as a unit – a group whose dynamic became stronger during time spent locked down together.

It is why, when you listen to Let The Bad Times Roll, you can hear that visceral energy and pure fun throughout. As Noodles says, that appreciation is elevated to another level, especially when the thing they loved the most had been taken away for so long.

Fast forward to 2024, and we see The Offspring celebrating the release of their eleventh record, fittingly titled, Supercharged.

Released in October, Supercharged was revealed off the back of what had been a busy year of touring for The Offspring – including the European summer festival circuit, and a special stopover in Melbourne, as part of the ALWAYS LIVE program last year.

Performing at the Forum Theatre in the heart of the city, The Offspring showed off a set of music that demonstrated not only their legacy, but the potential that a record like Supercharged means for the band moving forward.

Noodles considers the band’s latest effort a perfect distillation of The Offspring’s current mindset. “We do feel like we’re fired up. It’s why we called the record Supercharged!”

Sitting with Noodles at the band’s hotel, overlooking a traditionally grey and overcast Melbourne CBD, the enthusiasm the guitarist has for this current chapter of the band’s career is clear. Reflecting on how The Offspring’s process and structure for creating music has changed or has been bolstered in recent years, he admits that the formula has stayed pretty much the same. However, from the Let The Bad Times Roll creative arc through into Supercharged, The Offspring have never been tighter as a live group, and as a band in general.

“We missed it [touring] so much that we went into the studio and started rehearsing,” Noodles remembers of the early stages of the pandemic, which led The Offspring to be off-tour for a year and a half.

“That got us through the pandemic. We went over all our vocals, who was singing what part; making sure we weren’t missing any of the parts. We were looking into how different parts were strummed, making sure everything was locked in. We worked on all of it. It really tightened up the band. Once we were finally able to go out and play, we were playing some new songs off Let The Bad Times Roll and all the old stuff, but playing it better. It just felt amazing.”

The Offspring – ‘Let The Bad Times Roll’

Though the core partnership of Noodles and vocalist/guitarist Dexter Holland has remained strong since the band’s inception in the mid 1980’s, the current lineup of The Offspring is arguably one of its best to date. With longtime guitarist and current bassist Todd Morse, multi-instrumentalist Jonah Nimoy, and drummer Brandon Pertzborn completing the group, The Offspring’s Supercharged era has been built on a solid foundation of talent.

“All the feedback has been very positive, we’re stoked about that for sure,” Noodles says. “It’s all the good things coming together: feeling good in the studio, coming through all the shit and feeling like we’re fired up. It’s genuine.”

“You could see it on the fans’ faces too,” he remembers, thinking back to The Offspring’s first shows back, after so long away.

“Everyone was smiling. To have it back just felt so good. I remember the first show was at SoFi Stadium there were a few thousand people; I was nervous because it had been a year and a half. We went out there and as soon as I saw the looks on people’s faces, I just went, ‘Oh, we’ve got this. This is going to be so great’.”

Watch any live sets from The Offspring’s European summer online, you’ll see the majority of the comment section is full of love and support for this band – one that was part of a wave of bands responsible for a revival of love for punk rock throughout much of the 1990’s.

“We headlined Rock en Seine just outside of Paris, that was insane. Copenhell Festival in Copenhagen was also a blast,” Noodles reflects.

“There was one where the headliners were Foo Fighters and right before us was Queens of the Stone Age. We were in between those two bands and it was a phenomenal place to be. It may have been Hellfest in France, it was an incredible show.”

The Offspring – ‘Make It All Right’ Live at Hellfest 2024

Whether it is in Dexter’s unmistakable vocals, the signature humour threaded throughout the lyricism, or the pure and unadulterated fun that sits at the core of each song, The Offspring’s impact is undeniable.

Australian fans will be able to get the full Offspring experience in May, with the band using their exclusive Melbourne appearance in 2024 to announce the Australian leg of the Supercharged tour – of course, they wouldn’t simply come for one dance and leave the rest of the country hanging.

Noodles grins when remembering The Offspring’s early encounters with Australian audiences; a relationship that began in the mid-1990’s and the Big Day Out. The festival tour brought them to Australia the year after Smash became part of the cultural zeitgeist – a trip Noodles recalls fondly.

“We had a fanbase here because of the surf videos that we were on; Epitaph was really good at that time, just giving music out to skate, surfing and snowboarding videos,” he says.

“That is where our fanbase was here; it was smaller, but between them and the punks, that’s where it was in Australia. We have just been able to build on it ever since. We love it here, it feels very comfortable. It does feel like the States, only more mellow. Everyone’s more chilled out here, but you guys have a wicked sense of humour. Generally speaking, Australians take the piss all the time. I fucking love that. It’s like a British sense of humour, with a bit of American rebelliousness, but then chilled out. I love it here.”

An avid fan of Amyl and the Sniffers (“they’re phenomenal”), Noodles has been enjoying being able to discover artists and more new music now The Offspring have been able to tour internationally again, at the scale and frequency they were used to pre-2020.

This year will see The Offspring and the Melbourne favourites share festival lineups in South America, an opportunity Noodles is stoked for.

“I’m gonna have to start getting up and getting to the shows early for them, but it’ll be worth it,” he says. “I still haven’t seen them live, but I have all their records. I’ve never met them, but they seem like real down to earth people. The cover they did with Viagra Boys, so creepy! Like how do you take such a sweet, silly song by John Prine…I’m obsessed with it.”

Viagra Boys – ‘In Spite Of Ourselves’ (with Amy Taylor)

With The Offspring’s next Australian run set to have them in the country for the first half of May with Simple Plan, fans can expect a show from a band enjoying a striking new creative peak.

Hungry for the thrill of the live shows, The Offspring are more enthusiastic than ever to ensure their audiences are leaving each show with memories that will last – and a unique set, at that.

“We’re focusing on going out and upping our production, making the show bigger; we’re trying to figure out how to incorporate the audience,” Noodles explains.

“We can do that a lot with the video stuff – coming up in the punk scene, half of the time, the fans were on stage with you! You’d go to a Pennywise show and you’d still have half the audience on the stage, diving and bro’ing out with them. It becomes increasingly harder and lawsuits become more popular when things like that happen now, though. We’re trying to incorporate the audience without the chance of anyone getting hurt! That is still important to us.”

“We’ve also noticed that we’re starting to see more parents with their kids [at the shows],” he adds.

“The front row of the audience has always been late teens, to early 20’s. That really never changed, but we’re starting to see more and more parents fill in with their kids. I think that’s rad. Most of our fans, their parents hated us when Smash came out! Those kids grew up on that, they’re bringing their kids now, which is cool.”

You can peep all of The Offspring’s 2025 Supercharged Australian tour dates down below.