The Offspring, Sum 41, Blink 182, Paramore, Simple Plan and all the new generation… we said it enough here: we’re living in an amazing punk-rock/pop-punk era 2.0. stronger than ever and we love it! They might one of the old-school kind of the list but The Offspring also feel younger right now and they confirmed it at Forest National this 19 May with what might be their best show ever in Belgium!
Before speaking about The Offspring, let focus ourselves on the 2 great opening acts they choose for this tour: Trash Boat and Four Year Strong. The first act coming from the UK is a band we know really now as they’re non-stop on tour and played in Belgium only 2 months ago as main support for I Prevail at Trix. Before that, we saw them twice opening for Enter Shikari but also at Jera On Air. And in a month, we gonna catch them live again at Jera On Air. If you’re in the modern metal/punk/hardcore scene and haven’t heard about them yet, there’s something wrong! That being said, their show in Antwerp 2 months ago wasn’t the best as the audience wasn’t in the mood at all to enjoy their punk-rock/post-hardcore vibes. What about tonight? We expected a better one. Well, it was but not as good as we could have expected here. Duncan and his teammates did their best during 30 minutes playing their best songs like Don’t You Feel Amazing, He’s So Good, Alpha Omega where the public sang a bit on the chorus (“Idiot, You Fuckin’ Idiot”) and their cover of Linkin Park‘s hit Given Up. Like Duncan told us after their show in March, these kind of tours won’t give them the best audience’s reaction as it’s not really their typical public but it gave them a huge opportunity to make their name known for thousands of new potential fans. Luckily for them, they gonna have a lot of fans already when they’ll hit the stage of Jera On Air again in a couple of weeks!
Main support of the evening and already well-known in the scene, Four Year Strong had a second opportunity to warm-up the soldout Forest National tonight. Unfortunately, it surprised us but lot of people seems to not know them and we had to wait 2/3 of their 45 minutes set to see a decent reaction during the songs. Yes, the Belgian audience is respectful and applause between the song in this huge arena but didn’t move at all on the floor so far. For the last couple of songs, we had the chance to see the first small moshpit, some sing-alongs in the front and get some great good vibes from the crowd! The band seems happy enough with this and this good ending let us forget the bad beginning. By the way, good point for Four Year Strong and Trash Boat: they both had a great sound during their shows. Usually for the opening bands, even more in arenas, it’s not always the case… so good point Forest National. For the next time, maybe they should focus on the roof because in the seats, we received some water… hopefully it won’t end in a accident someday.
Last but not least, it was time to welcome The Offspring on stage. But first, we have the usual 30 minutes change-over. Usual? Not really! As soon as Four Year Strong left the stage, the huge LED screen behind the stage let appeared the artwork of The Offspring‘s last album with some music followed tons of funny attractions! Balloon on a drone dropping some gifts above the public, a Kiss Cam, A Botty Cam and many more, a roadie dressed as monkey having fun all around the venue followed by a camera-man, lot of classic punk/pop-punk/nu-metal songs for some karaokes, tons of t-shirts dropped or launched with a canon… During 30 minutes, we had the feeling to be at a soccer or hockey game in the US! And it was fuckin’ great!
After this crazy change-over, the show was finally on. And we weren’t ready for such a start: Come Out And Play, All I Want and Want You Bad, here’s the 3 first songs we got, 3 classics, 3 highlights of this evening that only started since 10 minutes! Basically, 90% of the show gonna be an highlight! If we don’t count the new song Let The Bad Times Roll and the couple of cliché moments during the set when the band says we were the best audience ever in the history, that we were billions of people in the venue and the few solos. Good point by the way that we got only 1 new song: that was another great surprise, the set-list was kinda best-off show!
During almost all the songs, the 8000 fans were on fire, singing along, moving along from the first row until the last one in the back: the party was on! Bad Habit, Hammerhead, Why Don’t You Get A Job, Hit That, Pretty Fly, The Kids Aren’t Alright… the powerful encore with You’re Gonna Go Far Kid or Self Esteem… we could always say that there’s 1 or 2 songs missing, maybe they didn’t play your favorite but it’s impossible to complain about the whole set-list! And the sound was really good!
Set-list: Come Out And Play, All I Want, Want You Bad, Let The Bad Times Roll, Staring At The Sun, Original Prankster, Genocide, Hit That, Hammerhead, Bad Habit, Cover By Noodles, In The Hall Of The Mountain King (cover), Blitzkrieg Bob (cover), Gotta Get Away, Gone Away, Why Don’t You Get A Job, Can’t Get My Head Around You, Pretty Fly For A White Guy, The Kids Aren’t Alright. Encore: You’re Gonna Go Far Kid, Self Esteem.
Stronger than ever. Remember when we were young? Well, we’re older now, so are The Offspring but everybody smashed it tonight! The legendary punk-rock band will celebrate their 40th Birthday in 2024. Could we expect an even better show and set-list? After their sick show tonight, we’re allowed to believe it!