Exclusive Offspring track-by-track

'Conspiracy Of One' is the next stage of world domination from US power punk phenomenon The Offspring, released on November 13.

The band's guitarist Noodles gave us the low-down on the follow-up to their ten million selling album, 'Americana'.

1. Come Out Swinging

"It's one of my favourite songs on the record. A fast, hard-driving, punk rock, melodic tune, and it's got a great meaning behind it - that when things start getting rough, and you start to get frustrated with the way of the world, don't just let it run over you, but come out and fight against it, and I love that kind of song. I love the feeling of the music, and when it's got a good lyric behind it like that, it makes it all the more worthwhile to me."

2. Original Prankster

Is this the 'Pretty Fly...' of this album? "Yeah, pretty much. This is one of the more light-hearted, more 'pop' songs on the record - I think there's definitely some punk rock attitude in there as well - it's really just a fun song, not serious at all - we try to do some tongue-in-cheek, just ridiculous, goofy stuff, and I would have to say this song is more along those lines! We used the rapper Redman's voice on this."

3. Want You Bad

"With 'Want You Bad', the song structure is almost like an old pop rock song, it definitely has that feeling to it I think it's a great song, very familiar-sounding."

4. Million Miles Away

"Another one of my favourites - one of the more mellow ones on the record."

5. Dammit, I Changed Again

"'Dammit, I Changed Again' is probably my [overall] favourite - it's fast, it's got some great guitar hooks in it, great vocal lines and back-ups. It's about being confused about right and wrong, just kind of struggling with that, and with your own identity."

6. Living In Chaos

"'Living In Chaos' is I think probably our biggest departure for this record, I can't really think of an Offspring song that sets a precedent for it, except that it's got that Middle Eastern kinda feel to it. We wanted to come up with a song that just had the crowd jumping up and down in unison in front of us," he laughs, "and this is our attempt to come up with something that will get them to do that - most of our stuff is really too fast to get 'em to jump up and down together! Lyrically it's about living in a society that seems to be running amok, or the feeling that it is when things start to get to you."

7. Special Delivery

"'Special Delivery' is just about a sick guy who's a stalker - one of the first songs Dexter ever wrote had a real similar sentiment, and was about a friend of ours, who is pretty harmless but we made him really sinister in that song! But there are people out there who are like this and that's kind of scary. The song is slow, kinda chaotic and schizophrenic."

8. One Fine Day

"Whereas, if you talk about a 'sing along in the pub' song - that's 'One Fine Day'! I think that sounds more like a 1977 British punk song than anything we've ever done before. We'd just had the NBA finals or whatever, and the Lakers won and there was a big riot in LA - and I know that Europeans are no strangers to riots breaking out in their soccer games, and it's even worse in some of the Latin countries - this is about having a riot with your friends and it's kinda poking fun at the phenomenon as well as rejoicing in it, I guess..."

9. All Along

"I think that was the first song written for this record, and one of the first ones finished. I don't know, what is that song about? I've totally forgotten, I'm sorry!"

10. Denial, Revisited

"That's probably the slowest song I think we've ever done, I think we wanted to take something like 'Gone Away' from 'Ixnay On The Hombre' and take it a step further - it's about a guy who refuses to accept that it's over, keeps thinking he can fix it, and then all of a sudden is forced to realise 'Oh damn, you know what? I've messed up for so long it really is over.'"

11. Vultures

"'Vultures' is another of my favourite songs on this record, and strangely it's a lot slower than the kind of song I normally like. Parts of this were written back when we wrote 'Ignition' [the band's second album, released in 1992]. For me, this song is about somebody who thinks he's losing his mind in a relationship - if things aren't going well, he thinks he's going crazy. I know I've been in relationships where I've been thinking: 'Is it me? Am I just totally crazy? What's going on - somebody please tell me I'm okay!'"

12. Conspiracy Of One

"'Conspiracy Of One' itself is about this kind of lone rebel madman guy. Now that there are really no superpowers that are threatening the planet with annihilation, this is about a lone guy who does it - just gets a bomb in the back of his car and brings the whole world to its knees, just starts the spark that sets the whole thing aflame."

From Dotmusic - October 27, 2000