The Offspring: Conspiracy Of One : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

If humorist Tom Lehrer shed forty years and joined a SoCal hardcore band, he might come up with a line like this gem from Dexter Holland: "Crime, crime/Rockin' like Janet Reno/Time, time/Eighteen, and life in Chino." The Offspring's sixth album, Conspiracy of One, forever blows away the stench of their unseemly, maudlin 1997 single "Gone Away." The album finds the Orange County band playing to its strengths: furious, compressed bursts of wit and good-humored spleen.

The Green Day-esque "Want You Bad" reverses the plot of 1994's "Self Esteem": Instead of getting dumped on by a manipulative woman, this time Holland pines for a straight-laced chick. As "Special Delivery" mutates from its steady bass-led groove into a full-throttle riff rocker, Holland portrays a sleazy delivery guy stalking one of his customers. The speed-crazed anthem "One Fine Day" imagines a perfect day drinking tall boys and rioting with the guys ("I believe it's my God-given right/To destroy everything in my sight"; are your ears burning, Fred Durst?). And Conspiracy of One has more whoa's than the combined works of Black Rob and Glenn Danzig.

There's much honor to be had in making great novelty songs, as anybody familiar with Lehrer, the Ramones and Biz Markie knows. And as long as the Offspring put topical yuks into their hook-crammed tunes, they hold the title as the world's most rocking novelty band.