[1][2][3] Royer and Rikk Agnew brought with them several songs written for their previous band, the Detours, including "Amoeba", "No Way", "Creatures", "Rip It Up", and "Kids of the Black Hole".

[2][3][5] "Kids of the Black Hole" describes Social Distortion frontman Mike Ness' Fullerton apartment, a graffiti-covered drug den that was a hangout for punks and a site for parties, sex, and violence.

[5][6][7] "To me, it is one of the greatest punk rock songs of all time", said Soto in 2014, "and of course 'Amoeba' was catchy as fuck, and everybody wants to hear it, but to me, 'Kids of the Black Hole' was like Quadrophenia for us.

"[8] In March 1981, the Adolescents entered Perspective Sound studios in Sun Valley, Los Angeles to record their debut album.

[2][10] Engineered and mixed by Thom Wilson and produced by Middle Class bassist Mike Patton (not to be confused for the Faith No More vocalist), it was recorded, mixed and mastered in only four days and featured most of the band's oeuvre at the time, including songs from their demos and Royer and Rikk Agnew's Detours songs.

Girl", a new song, was written by Brandenburg in response to being rejected by a new classmate who had come to Magnolia High School from Los Angeles after her parents divorced.

[12] The song's music, written by Frank Agnew, incorporates jarring shifts in tempo between fast, brash punk rock and slower heavy metal, which influenced later California bands.

[1][11] In a retrospective review, Jack Rabid of AllMusic gave the album 4.5 stars out of 5 and remarked that "the debut from these five Orange County kids established the mid-tempo, punk-pop 'Southern Cal sound', led by the long, great, pummeling, Johnny Thunders-derived solos of the two Agnew brothers, Rikk and Frank.... they're super-catchy, heavy-riffing rock & roll, proving again that punk was the true heir to the likes of Chuck Berry, Larry Williams, Bo Diddley, and Eddie Cochran.

[2][3][5] He was replaced by Pat Smear, formerly of the Germs, and the band planned their first tour to support the album, intending for it to begin in late summer 1981 and last into the fall:.

[2] Greg Graffin, whose band Bad Religion became friends with the Adolescents and played shows with them in 1980–81, became disillusioned with the violence surrounding the Los Angeles punk rock scene of the time and found reassurance in Brandenburg's lyrics to "Rip It Up", which spoke out against fans who used the aggressive music to justify fighting: "Have you had enough violence?

/ Just to kill boredom, makes no sense / We're not the background for your stupid fights / Get out of the darkness, it's time to unite / Do you think you're tough when you rip it up?

[1][2][3] With further lineup changes, the Adolescents released two more albums over the next two years, Brats in Battalions (1987) and Balboa Fun*Zone (1988), then broke up again in April 1989.

[5] Frank Agnew left after the band's reunion album, OC Confidential (2005), and Brandenburg and Soto later continued as the Adolescents with other lineups.

[17][18][19] Writing for the Los Angeles Times in 1998, Mike Boehm included Adolescents first in a list of "Essential Albums, '78–'98" giving an overview of Orange County punk and alternative rock, calling it "an underground classic.

'Amoeba', with lyrics by Royer, is a metaphoric account of a single-celled creature, read punk youth culture, growing in size and self-awareness under the scornful, dismissive eye of adult authority.

'Kids of the Black Hole' was Rikk Agnew's epic tribute to the hedonistic, comradely denizens of a Fullerton crash pad that cradled the fertile North County punk scene during 1979–80.