and drummer Ron Welty (who left the band in 2003) – were on the front lines, leading the charge. For a brief moment it seemed as if the sound of buzzsaw guitars, caffeinated rhythms and tweaked, anxious vocals would inherit the aggro-rock earth, and the Offspring – singer/guitarist Brian “Dexter” Holland, lead guitarist Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman, bassist Greg K. Smash, the band’s second album for Epitaph and third overall, was released on April 8, 1994, in the waning days of grunge. But it was the Offspring that would prove to be the imprint’s breakout stars. In the early Nineties, Epitaph Records, founded by Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz more than a decade earlier to release his own band’s music, had established itself as ground zero for the new wave of West Coast punk, putting out discs by speedy, skatey So-Cal acts like NOFX, Pennywise and mohawked Berkeley street urchins Rancid. Their Smash was, at the time, the best-selling album ever released on an independent label. In the year punk broke (again), Bay Area’s Green Day ultimately sold more records, but it was Orange County’s the Offspring who actually set records. In 1994, two young, fast, loud and snotty bands took California punk to new melodic heights and unheard of levels of international exposure – and went multi-platinum in the process.
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