THE OFFSPRING Singer On New Music: 'I Feel Optimistic We're Gonna Have Something Out Mid-Next Year'

At this past weekend's When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas, THE OFFSPRING singer Bryan "Dexter" Holland and guitarist Kevin "Noodles" Wasserman spoke to Rock Sound about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band's follow-up to 2021's "Let The Bad Times Roll" album. Dexter said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We're trudging along. I feel optimistic we're gonna have something out mid-next year."

Elaborating on where THE OFFSPRING is at the moment with regard to making the next LP, Dexter said: "It's a little bit more disorganized for us now. It's not like we go in with 10 songs and build them up in parallel. It's kind of like we work on this one and then this one. And so it's more like we have half an album almost done than a whole album half done."

Asked if there was anything they learned from the making "Let The Bad Times Roll" that they wanted to "lean more into" this time around, Noodles said: "What we learned is when we are not able to go out and play live, we really miss it. And we learned to make the most of our time in the studio and just have fun. It was a really, really creative time for us, actually. Right at the end of making 'Let The Bad Times Roll', ideas were just coming, and we've just been having a good time in the studio since then — and on the road too. It's so good to be back playing live music again."

THE OFFSPRING is once again working with producer Bob Rock (MÖTLEY CRÜE, METALLICA),who previously helmed three THE OFFSPRING LPs, including "Let The Bad Times Roll".

Last month, Noodles told "The Jesea Lee Show" that he and his bandmates had "six or seven songs" for the next THE OFFSPRING LP "'done done' — I think even mixed done," he said. "And we just wanna knock out another five or six, four or five. We wanna have at least 10 songs, I think, for the record, and then we'll be done. And I think next year we'll have something out."

Asked if the new OFFSPRING material follows an "old-school" vein or if it represents "a new era of OFFSPRING", Noodles said: "It's a little bit of both — all that. The last song we did definitely sounds like an old-school — sounds kind of like 'Come Out Swinging'. Definitely some old-school stuff and then some rocking stuff and then some kind of poppy punk stuff too, for sure."

In August, Dexter told The Orange County Register about the progress of the writing and recording sessions for THE OFFSPRING's next LP: "We're on a roll. We figured let's do it. Let's keep on doing it now. Because we're in between tours all the time. We don't really block out eight weeks. We go in for like a week or 10 days and we tend to focus on one song at a time. So we did another song and that makes six, not completely done, but they're mostly done. So we're four-ish songs away (from an album). I think we'll get something out early next year."

As for the overall musical and lyrical direction of the new THE OFFSPRING material, Dexter said: "Sometimes you just start writing songs and you don't realize how an album is coming together until it's almost there. Like on 'Americana'. 'Americana' was one of the last songs I wrote because I didn't realize until then all the other songs like 'Why Don't You Get A Job?' and 'Pretty Fly', they were describing American society. I didn't really realize that's what the album was about until I got almost done and thought well, I'll call it 'Americana' because that's like 'Americana' means American culture. This was my vision of what I thought American culture was doing in the late '90s. We're kind of still in that phase with the songs, but we've always liked the energy of punk music and the rebelliousness. What I'm focusing right now on is just melody. I want the songs to be really good."

"Let The Bad Times Roll" has been a huge global success, hitting career-high chart debuts with seven Top 5 and ten Top 10 international debuts and nine Top 10 debuts in the U.S. The album peaked at No. 3 on the U.K. chart and hit No. 1 on the Alternative Albums chart in the U.S.

THE OFFSPRING first achieved worldwide success in the 1990s with the release of their album "Smash", which sold over 11 million copies. Following "Smash", they continued to release hit after hit, popularizing rock at a mainstream level.

Throughout THE OFFSPRING's career, they've sold over a staggering 40 million albums, and toured arenas, and built a global fan base. "Let The Bad Times Roll" marked the band's tenth studio album and third album produced by Rock.

Originally formed under the name MANIC SUBSIDAL, THE OFFSPRING's lineup consists of Holland, Wasserman and bassist Todd Morse.