along with Nirvana, many of the leading alternative rock artists of the early 1990s acknowledged earlier punk acts (both famous and obscure) as influences, helping to inspire a punk rock resurgence. In 1994, California punk bands like Green Day, The Offspring, Rancid and Bad Religion had substantial crossover success with the aid of MTV and popular radio stations like KROQ-FM.[127] Although Green Day and Bad Religion were already on major labels, indie record companies like Epitaph also benefited from punk's revival. Green Day and The Offspring's enormous commercial success paved the way for bankable pop punk bands such as Blink-182, Simple Plan, Good Charlotte, and Sum 41 over the following decade. The Vans Warped Tour and the mall chain store Hot Topic brought punk even further into the U.S. cultural mainstream.The Offspring in concert in 2001
Following the lead of Boston's Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Long Beach, California's Sublime, ska punk and ska-core became widely popular in the late 1990s. The original 2 Tone bands had emerged amid punk rock's second wave, but their music was much closer to its Jamaican roots—"ska at 78 rpm."[128] Ska punk bands in the third wave of ska created a true musical fusion with punk and hardcore. The success of Rancid's 1995 album ...And Out Come the Wolves helped fuel this ska revival, and ska punk bands such as Reel Big Fish and Less Than Jake continued to attract fans into the 2000s. Other bands with roots in hardcore, such as AFI, also had chart-topping records in the new millennium. Celtic punk, with bands such as Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys merging the sound of Oi! and The Pogues, reached broad audiences. The Australian punk rock tradition continued with groups such as Frenzal Rhomb, The Living End, and Bodyjar. A growing number of bands bridged the divide between punk and the rock styles it had originally rebelled against: "The Hold Steady, The Constantines, and...Call Me Lightning have drawn from punk and classic-rock history in equal doses, merging the former's spitfire energy with the latter's sense of larger-than-life grandeur."[129]
With punk's renewed visibilty came concerns among some in the punk community that the music was being co-opted by the mainstream.[127] Committed participants in the scene argued that by signing to major labels and appearing on MTV, punk bands like Green Day were buying into the system that punk was created to challenge.[130] Many punk fans "despise 'corporate punk rock', typified by bands such as Sum 41 and Blink 182".[131] Such controversies have been part of the punk phenomenon since The Clash were widely accused of "selling out" when they signed with CBS Records in 1977.[132] By the 1990s, punk rock was sufficiently ingrained in Western culture that punk trappings were often used to market highly commercial bands as rebels. Marketers capitalized on the style and its connotations of hipness to such an extent that a 1993 ad campaign for an automobile, the Subaru Impreza, claimed that the car was "like punk rock".[133] Although the commercial mainstream has exploited many elements of punk, numerous underground punk scenes still exist around the world.
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