Dexter Holland has no excuse. At 42, he's old enough. As a one-time Ph.D. candidate in Molecular Biology, he's certainly intelligent enough. His interpretation of the world's problems: "s**t is f***ed up".

Nevertheless, apart from the less than articulate rant 'Stuff Is Messed Up', The Offspring's eighth studio album finds the singer and his band acting a little less like 16-year-olds than before. Goodbye (thankfully) to 'Pretty Fly (For A White Guy'), 'Why Don't You Get A Job', 'Hit That' and other cheesy, jokey ditties about drinking, slacking off and getting drunk.

Hello mature, tender ballads and soft rockers in the vein of Green Day's 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' or Blink 182's 'I Miss You'. With its pretty piano melody and lighter-waving chorus 'A Lot Like Me' could pass for an up-tempo Coldplay stadium anthem; the mawkish 'Kristy, Are You Doing Okay?' is a dead ringer for 'Wake Me Up When September Ends'; and with lyrics like "I wish I could heal you / And mend where you are broken", 'Fix You' rocks about as hard as a cradle.

But it's not quite time to put the old timers out to pasture — much of 'Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace' is a bold return to the no-nonsense punk of their 1994 breakthrough 'Smash'. With longtime Metallica producer Bob Rock tightening their sound and turning up the amps, the group turn powerful, even dangerous as 'Hammerhead' hits the wild, flailing intensity of 'Self Esteem'; 'Half-Truism' echoes the swagger (and giant woah-woahs) of 'Come Out And Play'; and 'Trust In You' recreates all the urgency of 'Gotta Get Away'.

Not much progress then in 14 years. S**t is, quite clearly, f***ed up. Again Dexter Holland has no excuse.