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Not long after Smash rearranged the indie landscape, the history-making relationship between the Offspring and Epitaph soured, leading to an acrimonious, and very public, split. Thom Wilson, Offspring and Dead Kennedys Producer, Dead Today, it has moved upwards of 10 million units worldwide.

In just its first year of release, Smash, fueled by two massive MTV and radio hits, “Come Out and Play” and “Self Esteem” (as well as a minor third single, “Gotta Get Away”), sold more than five million copies in the U.S. 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.