Review: The Offspring – Ixnay on the Hombre

I don’t believe that the Offspring are sellouts even though they did leave Epitaph for the bigger, more financially secure Columbia/Sony. There is only so far you can go on a independent label (don’t tell that to Pennywise, because they have proved me wrong already), but the Offspring saw a changing in the wind and decided to leave the home of Smash and release Ixnay on the Hombre as a full commercial release with the help of a major label.

What people did was label the CD, without listening to the music on it, and this CD is certainly not Smash II proving that The Offspring still have it, even on their fourth album release. Ixnay features both catchy punk tunes (“Don’t Pick It Up,” “Meaning of Life”) and songs that almost seem like 80s hair-band rock ballads (“Gone Away,” “Amazed”). The Offspring continue to change up what they are doing to stay with the times, while not compromising who they are.

Ixnay on the Hombre further diversifies the Offspring’s music. With “Don’t Pick It Up” they speak of not always believing what something is until you further examine it, or they could mean you shouldn’t think a piece of shit is really a candy bar. With “Gone Away” (my personal favorite song) lead singer Dexter Holland tells of losing a love, and asks to trade places with his lover who has passed.

Trendy or not, the songs on Ixnay show that the Offspring have the staying power to be around eight years after the release of Smash.

While Ixnay on the Hombre doesn’t diversify upon what has already been done in the punk genre, it further intensifies that the Offspring are a band to contend with, and they will continue to make good music far into the next century.