Smash is the third studio album by American rock band the Offspring, released on April 8, 1994, through Epitaph Records.

[10][11][12][13] As a fan favorite, the album received generally positive reviews from critics and garnered attention from major labels, including Columbia Records, with whom the band would sign in 1996.

By the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s, it had faded into an underground genre, though niche subgenres and fusions of punk such as grunge began to develop.

Punk's fates began to change in September 1991 when Nirvana released Nevermind and its lead single "Smells Like Teen Spirit".

The second single released from the album, "Self Esteem", became a radio hit, peaking at number 4 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic called it a "solid record, filled with enough heavy riffs to keep most teenagers happy".

[34] Smash made history becoming the first album released on Epitaph Records to obtain gold and platinum status, and has been certified multi-platinum in three countries, including the US,[36] Australia,[37] and Canada.

[43] On July 30, 1994, "Come Out and Play", the album's first single, topped the Modern Rock Tracks, and stayed on the chart for 26 weeks.

[44] Around the same time "Gotta Get Away" was officially chosen as the follow-up to "Self Esteem", "Bad Habit" was thought to be the third or fourth single from Smash when KROQ added it to its playlist and became one of the radio station's most requested songs; nonetheless, no music video nor standard single was released to promote "Bad Habit".

During Trivium's early days, guitarist Matt Heafy performed a cover version of "Self Esteem" at his middle school talent show at Lake Brantley High School, while the British synthpop group Cuban Boys also covered that song on their only full-length album Eastwood.

Brett Gurewitz, the guitarist of Bad Religion and president of Epitaph, had also mentioned that he liked Smash and described it as "a very good record".

[46] Along with Green Day's Dookie, Smash was among the most commercially successful punk rock albums released in 1994, a year when the genre reached arguably its greatest popularity.

[52] Smash, as well as the singles "Come Out and Play", "Self Esteem", and "Gotta Get Away" have a common artwork theme: an ominous (and highly distorted) skeleton on the cover, disc, and back of the CD case.

This symbol is believed to represent the core motifs of the album: death, greed, suicide, violence, addiction, and abuse.

The skeleton is used to represent that the continuation of these acts will inevitably lead to death (or alternatively, the end of the human race).

The art direction is credited to Kevin Head and Fred Hidalgo, who also designed the artwork for the Bad Religion album Recipe for Hate.

[54] In the wake of the success of Smash, the Offspring was reportedly offered but turned down opening arena tours with bands like Stone Temple Pilots and Metallica (replacing Alice in Chains on the latter's summer 1994 U.S. tour), due to their desire to continue playing in clubs; Holland has been quoted as saying, "It just really didn't seem like the right thing to do.

[54] In January 1995, the Offspring embarked on their first tour of Japan and Australia, where they co-headlined Big Day Out with Ministry, Primal Scream, Hole, and the Cult.

Remastered issues of Ignition and Smash were released on June 17, 2008, the same day as the Offspring's eighth studio album Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace.