ALBUM REVIEW: Green Day – Father Of All Motherfuckers (Reprise/Warner Records)
Green Day are living proof of how difficult it is to stay relevant when you’re more than 30 years into your career, and have sold more than 86 million records worldwide.
Formed in 1986 in Berkeley, California, they are one of the bands widely credited with reviving mainstream interest in punk rock with their 1994 major label debut album Dookie, which sold more than 10 million copies.
A decade later they released the magnificent rock opera American Idiot, which gave their career a new direction, but cost them a lot of original fans, who screamed ‘that’s not punk’.
Since then they have struggled a little for direction, releasing American Idiot part 2 in the form of 2009’s 21st Century Breakdown, and the ill-advised 2012 trilogy ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, ¡Tré!.
Their last album, 2016’s Revolution Radio, marked something of a return to form as far as sales were concerned, debuting at No. 1 in the Billboard 200 in the US (even in many critics remained unconvinced).
So, then, to their latest offering, which kicks off with the provocatively-named title track. Released as the lead single, it was never going to get much airplay for Billie-Jo Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool.
It’s not the song’s title I took issue with, however, it’s the fact it didn’t sound an awful lot like Green Day, with its handclaps and falsetto vocals which appear to have been fed through a vocoder.
It’s a title obviously aimed to shock. But come on guys, you’re not 15 any more, you’re closer to 50, so how about acting like grown-ups, eh? Most of your contemporaries (Rancid, Bad Religion, Descendents) have managed it, and still make good albums.
The problems with Green Day seems to be that they don’t really know what they want to be. Second track Fire, Ready, Aim sounds like early ’00s Swedish rockers The Hives, while Oh Yeah! has a strong ’70s glam influence.
Meet Me On The Roof is a mid-paced tune which sounds like dozens of nondescript indie bands, while I Was A Teenage Teenager is just generic Green Day – but at least they sound like themselves.
Stab You In The Heart isn’t a bad song, but its rock ‘n’ roll riffing reminds me of Armstrong’s side project Foxboro Hot Tubs.
Sugar Youth, one of the feistier tracks here, comes in at less than two minutes, and again at least sounds like Green Day, while Junkies On A High sees Armstrong in self-examination mode, singing “rock and roll tragedy, I think the next one could be me”.
Take The Money And Crawl is more generic punk-pop, and contains the absolutely cringe-worthy lyric “you can take a walk or you can suck my cock”. Really?
The last song, Graffitia, is the best song on here, but I fear a lot of casual consumers, listening to Father Of All.. on their streaming service of choice, won’t even make it that far, despite the fact the album’s just 10 tracks and 26 minutes long.
Its main problem is that as an album it doesn’t really have a focus. It’s not political, it’s not about Armstrong’s well-documented personal problems, and although the band play as well as ever, the lyrics seem short on focus and the songs lack real bite.
All in all, it’s not a bad record, but a punk album? Nah. If this is a too-little, too-late attempt to resharpen their edge, those days seem long gone, I’m afraid. 6/10 at best.
