The Offspring may not have been the headliner for the Copenhell Wednesday, but they were possibly the band I was looking the most forward to seeing this day (tough toss-up between them and Bruce Dickinson), and judging from the huge crowd present in front of the Helvíti stage, I wasn’t the only one looking forward to this particular show.

“Fuck yeah, Dexter! We made it to Copenhell!”
- Kevin John ‘Noodles’ Wasserman (guitar)

Yes, the crowd was packed, and they didn’t have to wait for the action to start, as The Offspring went flying out of the gate with Come Out And Play, and followed this up with a veritable smörgåsbord of hits from across their career, most heavily featuring tracks off of Smash and Americana. The most surprising and impressive inclusion for me came after they’d played Bad Habit, I got an immediate hankering for Gotta Get Away, but figured that it probably wouldn’t show up, but damnit, it did! As the very next song, no less! Keep in mind, this was my first time ever seeing The Offspring, so I have no real idea of how common or uncommon this song is in their live shows.

The music was certainly keeping the spirits up for everyone, but The Offspring proved highly entertaining in other ways as well. There was a lot of comical banter back and forth between frontman Bryan Keith ‘Dexter’ Holland and Noodles, with Noodles often leading the conversation and Dexter lending some comic remarks and sarcastic suggestions along the way.
The band also included a solo (of sorts) where Noodles played Grieg’s In The Hall Of The Mountain King, and you need look no further than our Copenhell reviews of Jakob Stegelmann and Aarhus Symphony Orchestra to get a good idea of how that went down with the crowd - a massive circle pit was definitely afoot!
In the aforementioned Gotta Get Away, drummer Brandon Pertzborn was also allowed a solo, which he kept fairly short and to the point, which is the way we prefer them here.
More than this, The Offspring had also brought along large beach balls for the audience to play around with, confetti - SO MUCH CONFETTI - and my personal favourite was probably the car dealer balloon men they used during Pretty Fly (For A White Guy), looking like the main character from the music video. Even more fun was that there was a guy in the crowd dressed exactly like the character as well, and he could be seen crowdsurf by several times, especially during this particular song.

“This festival is called Copenhell, but it feels like Heaven to me!”
- Noodles (guitar)

Yeah, the crowd was definitely getting into it as well. The action in the crowd was kicking up a real dust cloud, and there was plenty of times we got to sing along or have classic vocal exercises with the band as well, like the time Dexter had us shouting “Fuck yeah!” over and over again.
This band clearly knew how to involve the fans, and the fans loved them for it. The Offspring delivered one hell of a party to really kick the festival off with on its first day, and for a first time visit with the band, I can’t imagine it going any better than this.

Setlist:

Come Out and Play
All I Want
Want You Bad
Staring At The Sun
Make It All Right
In The Hall Of The Mountain King (Edvard Grieg cover)
Blitzkrieg Bop (Ramones cover)
Hit That
Million Miles Away
Bad Habit
Gotta Get 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
You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid
Self Esteem