"Hammerhead" is a song by American punk rock band The Offspring. 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 the first single from the album. The song was first played at the Summer Sonic Festival in 2007. It peaked at No. 2 on the US Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart.

The song was originally set to go to radio on May 6. However, the world premiere of the song took place on May 2 at 6 PM PST on KROQ Los Angeles (their hometown station). On May 5, 2008, The Offspring's official website released a free download of the song MP3 format, 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 comes free of digital rights management.

According to singer/guitarist Dexter Holland, the lyrics are from the perspective of a gunman in a school shooting. This is supported by the closing lyrics "and you can all hide behind your desks now/and you can cry teacher come help me". Lead guitarist Kevin 'Noodles' Wasserman 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". He is affected by a huge force (Hammerhead - "it hammers in my head") in his mind that makes him deluded.

The official music video follows suit, alternating between the perspectives of the deluded shooter (who believes that he is a soldier) and that of the real world, often blending the two together. For instance, two children are shown tossing a "bomb" between one another, presumably simply a ball, while birds take the image of stealth fighters, and the shooter is consistently accompanied by the warped image of a military commander, presumably a personification of his military delusion.

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