THE OFFSPRING’s New Album Is ‘On Hold’

BLABBERMOUTH.NET

THE OFFSPRING vocalist/guitarist Bryan "Dexter" Holland spoke to Kylie Olsson of Download TV about the status of the band's long-awaited tenth album. The follow-up to 2012's "Days Go By" was once again produced by Bob Rock, who also worked on the band's last two LPs. Dexter said (see video below): "It's basically done. We were kind of just doing some last-minute tweaks and stuff and getting ready. We had a single scheduled to be released and all that stuff, and then this [coronavirus pandemic] happened. So it's on hold at the moment." This past April, THE OFFSPRING jumped on the "Tiger King" bandwagon by recording a cover version of THE CLINTON JOHNSON BAND's "Here Kitty Kitty", a song made popular by Joe Schreibvogel — better known as Joe Exotic, the "Tiger King" — through the Netflix docuseries. Last summer, THE OFFSPRING guitarist Kevin "Noodles" Wasserman talked to Finland's Kaaos TV about the musical direction of the band's new material. He said: "It's definitely an OFFSPRING record. There's songs that you're gonna hear that are gonna be easily recognizable as vintage-sounding OFFSPRING, for sure. We're doing a song live every night called 'It Won't Get Better'. We would like to do more of the stuff live, but we want the fans to hear the songs the way we recorded them, the way we want them to hear it rather than a shitty cellphone recording…. One of the songs on there is gonna be 'Coming For You', which we released about four years ago, and that song is a good indication as well. Both those songs are pretty much dead center in what this record's gonna be like." Speaking about THE OFFSPRING's working relationship with Rock, Noodles said: "We hit it off with him immediately. It's been a real comfortable relationship. He makes us work and he makes us try harder to be as best as we can, but he does it in a way that's cool — he's not being a dick about it. He makes us feel like we can do it. Rather than making us feel like, 'Oh, man, we're not playing good enough,' or whatever, or, 'We're not coming up with the best parts for this,' he makes us feel like we've got more in us and we can bring more to the table. So it's great working with Bob. We love that guy." THE OFFSPRING debuted "It Won't Get Better" live in concert in June 2018 and has been performing it ever since. Noodles described the track as "kind of like a straight-forward OFFSPRING song." THE OFFSPRING's last single, the aforementioned "Coming For You", dropped in 2015. Last year, THE OFFSPRING bassist Gregory "Greg K." Kriesel, who hasn't performed with the band since 2018, filed a federal lawsuit against Noodles and Dexter alleging trademark infringement and breach of partnership agreement over the rights to THE OFFSPRING name. In response, Holland and Wasserman filed a cross-complaint, denying basically everything Kriesel has alleged and asking the court to appoint 'three disinterested appraisers to appraise the fair value" of Kriesel's shares of THE OFFSPRING.