Return to the Black Hole is a live album by the American punk rock band the Adolescents, released in September 1997 on Amsterdamned Records.

[1][2][3] Rikk Agnew had left the band a few months after the album's release and was replaced, first by Pat Smear and then by Steve Roberts, and the Adolescents had recorded the Welcome to Reality EP before breaking up in August 1981.

[1] The Blue Album lineup reunited in December 1989 for a show at the Reseda Country Club, which is the performance presented on Return to the Black Hole.

[6][7] Agnew soon left to focus on his family life and maintained a low-profile musical career in subsequent years, playing on albums by Tender Fury, Rule 62, and Mr.

You don't even need to know that this group helped kick off the second wave of punk in Southern California; having initially been outsold only by the Dead Kennedys, they were as popular as Circle Jerks, Black Flag, T.S.O.L., Youth Brigade, Channel 3, Agent Orange, and the young Social Distortion and Bad Religion.

All you have to do is take in the might of the soaring leads more or less pioneered by Rikk Agnew and his brother Frank, even more thick and stinging live, and you understand.