The Offspring rallied the O2 Arena under the banner of electric nostalgia for their SUPERCHARGED tour.
London made for a rather glorious stop on the SUPERCHARGED tour, with The Offspring filling not just any venue but the enormous O2 Arena. I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting that, not because they aren’t capable of packing out the place, far from it, but because I wasn’t sure whether the show had changed enough to justify it. Turns out it has. In any case, the crowd is switched on from start to finish.
Their support act? Simple Plan. The evening is therefore steeped in nostalgia for the generation of skate-punk millennials with a soft spot for catchy tunes. We’re quickly treated to hits like Shut Up!, Welcome To My Life or What’s New Scooby Doo?, short, but made rather entertaining by a stage invasion of mosh-pit-dancers dressed as Scooby. The lighting design is nicely done and we see the drummer even goes for a bit of crowd-surfing. The energy is there, though perhaps not as palpable as we might have hoped. Still, after an hour-long set ending with Perfect, we happily give in to the nostalgic moment, which is really only just getting started.
The interval between sets is handled in full American style, topped with a spicy punk sauce. Down in the pit, their Gorilla-man, their equivalent of Green Day’s Bunny, dives into the crowd and upgrades two people from the seats to the front row. A little blimp bearing the band’s logo floats overhead, while audience cams cycle from Kiss Cam to Fuck You Cam. The type of camera switches every minute like a TikTok; the soundtrack follows suit and the pre-recorded commentary does get a bit repetitive. Gone is the old endless waiting playlist! Now it’s constant spectacle! And I’m torn between appreciating it and being slightly bored. It’s well done, but maybe… a bit much? I’m not sure.
Time flies and I don’t dwell on the intro. The Offspring are in great shape and firing on all cylinders with a classic setlist. Honestly, it feels like everything’s in the same order as last time. A few songs from the new album, SUPERCHARGED, swapped in for others. But really, we all know this new record also serves as a pretext to tour outside the summer festival circuit, something they always do, for the delight of fans and the nostalgics of the ’90s and ’00s. The formula works, even with only two original members left. The formula works even when the hits repeat like before. And the formula is well staged, so why change it?
From Come Out and Play to Self Esteem, we get some high notes for Dexter Holland to reach on All I Want, big classics (Staring at the Sun, Gotta Get Away), new tracks (Looking Out for #1, Make It All Right, Let The Bad Times Roll), and a few medleys. These include Hit That and Original Prankster, blended into one, as well as some nods to their metal influences, between two massive inflatable skeletons, with Electric Funeral, Paranoid, Crazy Train, and their punk roots with I Wanna Be Sedated. This section is preceded by their fierce Hammerhead and thunderous Bad Habit, where the band pause to chat a bit before the final part of the song… Because as it turns out, they’re quite talkative! Scripted, yes, but chatty and cheerful, and it’s great fun to watch.
A drum solo is enough to deflate the skeletons and bring out a white grand piano for Gone Away… and for Hey Jude. This tribute leads into Why Don’t You Get a Job?, still effective and borrowing from The Beatles once again. Then Pretty Fly (for a White Guy) rings out as the star of the show before the set closes with The Kids Aren’t Alright. For the encore, You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid and Self Esteem finish the job. It sounds punk, it’s great fun, it’s thoroughly controlled… but can we really blame them on such a packed tour? All in all, it was a cracking night. Precise, polished, The Offspring, supercharged, are bloody effective.
