Green Day Saviors: America’s premier punk rockers have gone back through time
The boys from California have updated their take on American idiocy, and it is superb
Green Day are back with a first new album in four years, and it is a record that they have used to once again critique the modern world. Their last album ‘Father of All Motherfuckers’, was used as a way for Green Day to produce a ‘classic rock and roll’ album, to reflect on this classic sound.
The band made a name for themselves as true punk protestors through ‘American Idiot’ back in the early 2000s. ‘Saviors’ has been released 20 years later, but the tone of the record overlaps somewhat. Maybe the political scene is just as underwhelming as it was two decades ago.
The album opens with a song that sums up Green Day’s attitude to songwriting more than perhaps any other on the tracklist. ‘The American Dream is Killing Me’, opens up the 15-song assortment, and touches on the famous quote line which once took millions of people to the USA.
In this heavy critique, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong points out how society no longer wants ‘huddled masses’, a term used to describe the people who once emigrated to America in search of a better life. The song is interesting as it doesn’t merely argue the American Dream is dead, it suggests that the dream is running people into the ground through a seemingly futile search for it.
‘Look Ma, No Brains’ was released in October 2023 alongside the album’s first track. In contrast, it is a quick-fire burst of Green Day-esque punk rock chaos, with an awareness of someone being unintelligent, but being too stubborn to ask for help.
‘One Eye Bastard’ is the last of the singles released in the lead-up to the album dropping, and talk of it sounding like something fresh off ‘American Idiot’ is pretty accurate. A swinging chorus and a foot-stomping beat are infectious, coming together to give a well-balanced chapter in a carefully constructed album.
The classic Green Day sound in a free-flowing, relatively short track, is on the album in the form of ‘1981’. Historical references of a woman being The Cold War inside Billy Joe’s East Berlin head and take of communists and cocaine feels apt for a band who have been influenced by these in the past.
‘Goodnight Adeline’ brings with it a bit more of a ballad-type sound, and its slower tempo brings warmth to the album. It is one of the few songs that takes a critique of modern life, something that Green Day have done throughout their career. They give the same commentary on society but do so now as 50-year-olds rather than in their 20s and 30s, during which time they created most of their cult classic songs.
‘Stranger Days Are Here To Stay’ is perhaps the best example of this in the album. Armstrong lists things that he sees have become the norm in modern society, such as high levels of racism, contrasted with a far less modern problem of Uber’s running late. Green Day in this song suggests that things have been going downhill since the death of David Bowie, roughly eight years ago.
The album has a calming ebb and flow to it, with energetic punk anthems interjected with calming, more methodical tunes. Green Day have been at this for decades now, and this latest experiment is not one which will please all fans. Yet what it shows is the band is willing to progress with their sound, whilst at the same time paying tribute to the iconic sound they have put together for loyal fans over the years.
Green Day have been giving a critical view of the world and just how backward it can be for almost 35 years now. ‘Saviors’ is the latest chapter of this and, although it walks the borderline of being pop punk, it stays mostly true to Green Day’s core, and will become an important part of the band’s tapestry of discography in the coming weeks, months and years.
