24 Hour Revenge Therapy is the third studio album by American punk rock band Jawbreaker, released on February 7, 1994, through Tupelo Recording Company and Communion Label.

Described as a blend of their traditional punk rock and pop-punk sound, it harkened back to the simplistic arrangements of Jawbreaker's debut studio album, Unfun (1990).

24 Hour Revenge Therapy has been included on best-of lists for pop-punk and emo by the likes of Alternative Press and Rock Sound; Chris Conley of Saves the Day and Rise Against had expressed admiration for the album.

[1] The material that Schwarzenbach came up with revolved around locations, relationships, and people; Ronen Givony, who wrote the 2018 33 1/3 book on the band, said that while the tracks on Bivouac were "figurative, the new songs were confessional, unguarded, [and] diaristic".

[11] Jawbreaker began their van trip from San Francisco to engineer Steve Albini's house in Chicago, Illinois, on May 14, 1993, arriving a few days later.

[1][12] Albini had built up a reputation as an engineer recording revered albums by the likes of Nirvana and PJ Harvey, alongside the works of acts that members of Jawbreaker admired, such as Big Black and the Jesus Lizard.

[16] A national tour was planned to begin after sessions wrapped, though the initial first show in Dayton, Ohio, was cancelled as Jawbreaker remained in Chicago.

"[1] A sample of Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen was recorded for it by playing a cassette of performing, done by pointing a Shure SM57 microphone at a boom box speaker.

[26] Dan Fidler of Spin said it was "composed of short, tight arrangements", centered around Pfahler's "furious drumming" and Bauermeister's "barreling bass".

[23] Schwarzenbach highlighted five albums that he listened to while creating 24 Hour Revenge Therapy: Bad Moon Rising (1985) by Sonic Youth; World Outside (1991) by the Psychedelic Furs; No Pocky for Kitty (1991) by Superchunk; Something Vicious for Tomorrow (1992) by Treepeople; and The Problem with Me (1993) by Seam.

[30] Journalist Dan Ozzi, in his book Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore 1994–2007 (2021), said Schwarzenbach separated himself from his pop-punk contemporaries by entwining cleverness, allegories, and self-observation into the songs' lyrics.

[32] The band's uneasy mindset towards the strict attitude and rules-based philosophy of the punk scene was documented in "Indictment", "Boxcar", and "West Bay Invitational".

Arin Keeble, in his piece on Jawbreaker collected in The Routledge Companion to Music and Modern Literature (2022), said both tracks employ literary imagery to repel against the conventions of punk rock.

[21] "Boxcar" was written while on the side of a road in France as their touring van was being searched[1] and deals with the concept of selling out in the punk rock scene.

[41] Keeble remarked that the track's allusion to Kerouac was framed as a markedly "unpunk activity", echoing the criticism of the rest of the lyrics, due to his alliance with the Beat Generation.

"[35] Several of the lines in the sample detail parts of the Bay Area; Keeble also wrote that the mentions of writing and reading in the lyrics were a reference to "Boxcar".

[35] "Ache" is a leftover from the Bivouac sessions; for 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, Schwarzenbach played an anthemic-sounding guitar running through a RadioShack amplifier.

[36] Schwarzenbach felt disconnected from his girlfriend, despite them living 20 city blocks apart; Bauermeister said it shared a similar structure to "The Boat Dreams from the Hill".

[19] In October 1993, Schwarzenbach returned to his apartment in Oakland to find that one of his housemates, Bill Schneider, had taken a message and phone number for John Silva of Gold Mountain Management.

[57] The first show in Albuquerque saw them play to five thousand people, a slim number of whom knew Jawbreaker; tour posters and adverts in newspapers incorrectly retained the Wipers as the opening act.

Attraction from major labels in the East Bay region of San Francisco continued,[61] with contemporaries Green Day having signed earlier in the year to Reprise Records.

[67] The bottom-right square consists of foil from a cigarette packet; the album's title is included in maroon-colored letters, referencing the tips of the matches in the top-right box.

[65] 24 Hour Revenge Therapy was quickly overshadowed by the popularity of Dookie (1994) by Green Day and Smash (1994) by the Offspring, both of which pushed pop-punk and punk rock into the mainstream,[24][69] while the prevalence of grunge was receding.

[74] The June 1994 issue of Maximum Rocknroll was devoted to independent and major labels; Weasel spent part of his column in the zine defending the band.

"[23] Louder writer Mischa Pearlman called it a "dark, late night cigarette of a record, one full of hope and despair and jaded existentialism".

[24] Author Barry M. Prickett, writing in MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide (1999), saw it as the "stepping stone to a big league [major label] signing.

"[83] In the aftermath of Dookie and Smash, Jawbreaker and 24 Hour Revenge Therapy kept the spotlight of punk in the mainstream alongside other 1994 releases, such as Stranger Than Fiction by Bad Religion and Let's Go by Rancid.

[26] Discussing its legacy, Givony wrote that it acted as a time capsule of a period before the "internet and email became ubiquitous [...] of the last moment when artists and fans genuinely cared whether a big corporation or a small indie label released their music".

[87] Brian Stout of PopMatters said the way that Joyce Manor wove stories of living in Torrance, California, throughout Never Hungover Again (2014) was akin to Jawbreaker detailing the Bay Area on 24 Hour Revenge Therapy.

[91] Josh Caterer of the Smoking Popes, Chris Conley of Saves the Day, and Craig Finn of the Hold Steady have expressed admiration for the album.