The song is featured as the fourth track on the band's eighth studio album, Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace (2008), and was released as its first single.

On May 5, 2008, the Offspring's official website released a free download of the song MP3 format,[4] in much the same style as "Original Prankster" (from 2000's Conspiracy of One).

To download it, users were required to provide an email address to receive a link to a high-quality MP3 of the track, which came free of digital rights management.

Lead guitarist Noodles elaborated on this, stating that the lyrics describe a gunman who believes that everything he does is for the greater good - "take a life that others may live".

Richard Cromelin of the Los Angeles Times also claimed that "Hammerhead" had the strongest lyrics of the album,[10] and The Dreaded Press praised the song's 'hard-hitting drums' and Dexter's 'urgent howling' giving a 'surprisingly fresh' result.