This article was originally published in The UB Post on February 21, 2020.
Oakland-based Pop-punk trio Green Day released their thirteenth studio album, Father of All…, earlier this month. Green Day announced the album simultaneously with the announcement of their joint tour with Fall Out Boy and Weezer late last year. The band’s last effort was 2016’s Revolution Radio, a solid album that brought rave reviews from fans and critics alike.
Does their latest release live up to the solid reputation that Green Day built over their 30 year career?
Father of All… is an attempt at creating what old-school Green Day fans loved: pure high-octane pop-punk music. On the surface, the album sounds great. Tracks like Oh Yeah! and I Was a Teenage Teenager are upbeat, short and simple when compared to other songs from some of their newer releases. This album is far closer to the Dookie era in sound than anything else they’ve done in the last twenty years. With the exclusion of Revolution Radio, I’d say this is probably the best album they’ve done since American Idiot.
But saying this is the best album since American Idiot (with the exclusion of Revolution Radio) isn’t exactly saying much. The album only has ten songs with a run-time of 26 minutes, which is barely long enough to get me from my house to school everyday. The production impedes the potential that the album probably had. Despite being high-octane, it’s boring. Any listen after the first listen is absolutely pointless, and I probably won’t be playing it again unless it’s the only CD in my car. Still though, this album eclipses 2009’s 21st Century Breakdown, and the mistakes that were Uno, Dos, and Tre.
Fans may enjoy a few choice songs off the record, but overall it’s not worth the time. As the band approaches the 30th anniversary of their debut LP 39/Smooth, this is certainly an unfortunate way to mark the occasion. At least fans still have the 30th anniversary of Kerplunk and Dookie to look forward to.
Tony Sheaffer is a staff writer for the UB Post who writes a weekly music column.
Tony Sheaffer 