Do you know your enemy? Do you know Your enemy?

The question is Green Day, do you know yours? 'Coz I do.... Its called 'not knowing when to call it a day'.

Listening to 21st Century Breakdown you can't help but wonder when Green Day stopped caring about what they actually subject their fans to, and just started writing the same songs over and over again and hoping by slagging off politics that no one will notice. '21st Century..' is like a watered down version of American Idiot. Same boy/girl concept. Same riffs. Same shouty nonsense. Same structure.

But nowhere near as effective.

Firstly, it lacks the timing that gave 'Idiot' a reason for people to like it - (an album of angry rants about the government at the start of Bush’s second term in office anyone?) and screams of a band struggling to come to terms with the fact that there are plenty of young exciting bands citing them as influences, who are doing it twice as well.

Musically, you can never expect a great deal from Green Day; Kings of the three chord riff as they are. However this album also sounds confused and at conflict with itself throughout. One of many excellent examples of this is 'Before The Lobotomy'. Starting out gently, almost cautiously creeping into your eardrums with its soft reverb on the guitar, Billie Joe snivels down the microphone about how '...there is no more laughter'. Well, after that, You really expect Green Day to take this track down the sweeping ballad route as you can practically hear them dying to do something a bit different.

 
Within one and a half minutes they've broken out the same chords and same riffs they use on every other track on this album and morphed it into another pop punk tragedy that the under 12s will adore. The same can also be said for 'Viva la Gloria!' (the first one...there are two by this name on the album) and '21 guns' There are others far worse though. With lyrics like 'I text a postcard...I’m sending all my love to you..' the cringe worthy, 'Last Night on Earth' makes them sound like a the weak boy band on X-factor instead of an allegedly 'important' punk band with something to say.

 
Overall the band seem confused by what they're fighting against here. Politics? Modern day life? Drugs? Education? Broken hearts of teenagers everywhere? Instead of trying new things and experimenting with the things they've learnt after nigh on18 years in the industry, they hide behind their nice safe 'we hate the government, aren't we punk?' personas. This album would have faired much better had they not just tried to remake American Idiot. After all, what’s the point of making a concept album if its exactly the same concept as your last concept album?

 

 

 

Have Green Day lost their originality? Are they still relevant? Is it time to drop the eye-liner?  We've created a special forum n' everything...