Years ago when I was a lot younger than I now find myself, I discovered a band that made me excited made me feel music could be fun, id never really enjoyed music till this point.
That band was obviously Green Day, with their punky take on pop music I was hooked like musical heroin.
Well over the years this band grew up, as did I.
First album on the turn to the 90’s,”1039 smoothed out slappy hours” was simple yet very effective punk pop which made me jump around like a loon.
They followed this with a punky master class taking hints from all the greats but blending in their own soft sloppy pop, and guess what, it really worked, following the success of this album Green Day were signed to a major label a big no-no to many fans but to me it meant more money to make great music.
They followed this with the awesome Dookie a bestseller wherever you went, topped the charts in various nations.
After this a lot of people thought they had disappeared though they released a few albums which never really hit the upper echelons of the charts.
Then came 2003’s American Idiot, an album that took ideas from all over the spectrum, bit of rock opera check! Bit of punk check! Almost too perfect it gained many album of the year awards etc!!
So this brings us up to date?!?
The Album
We start with singer Billie Joe basically singing acapello, this soon leads into a rock opera number, starting with just a couple of chords on the guitar soon joined by crashing drums and a big bass sound.
Billie Joe Armstrong sounds epic here, opening with a powerful, yet very tuneful display, halfway through the tune changes and we hear a different Green Day, more like an oi punk band, kind of angry sounding!
This is good, Green day are really mixing their influences and styles to suit everyone.
We soon enter ballad land and remember this is just one song, think Queen’s Bohemian rhapsody that can be done by a punk band!!!!!
They quickly follow this with radio hit know your enemy, which is far from the best song on the album, but does inject5 a lot of energy, I can imagine jumping around like a loon, though im too old to do that lol! Viva la Gloria is a beautiful ballad over violins etc, until the punky rock side joins the mess of music, and it joins in a gorgeous way almost snogging the violin players and don’t ask what its doing with the cellists!
We have a few tracks like this nice, well played and recorded but not really worth reviewing they are all good but in the same way as the previous song.
The next track is catchy but Billie Joe insists on over using the megaphone effect, which is a big shame as chorus is catchy as swine flu.
Almost the best song on the album is the upon you “Last night on earth” is a beautiful ballad along the lines of when September ends and good riddance though tonnes better. BJ shows he can really sing on this song.
What you find around this point is that the album may be slightly too long, some of the songs feel a bit like fillers, though fillers on an album like this would go nicely on most albums as main tracks.
Fast forward a few tracks and we have the real stand out song, I normally like rocky upbeat stuff, but the down beat non rocky 121 guns wins for me hands down, you have beautiful lyrics, vocals and music its almost perfect, not many songs would stand up to it!!
Overall
This Album is going to get a 4 outta 5 mainly cos it was slightly too long a couple of tracks could have been trimmed but a very nice effort
Fanks for reading ive been kyle coare, take care.
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