GREEN DAY – 21st CENTURY BREAKDOWN

Here we go again, another high-concept American punk-rock odyssey from Green Day, purveyors of haughty and ego-centric corporate punk for the masses. Oxymorons aside, this latest epic is actually very well written and sequenced. Billy Joe Armstrong’s melodies have been whittled to a fine art, and he commands this army of songs with aplomb, leading this mega-tight 3-piece through this long conceptual romp. The theme of this record seems to journey through a post-apocalyptic insurrection of young America, fighting the good fight for global de-privatization and human rights. The loud, glossy production serves the songs well, particularly the rampant Last Night On Earth and the decidedly evocative Horseshoes and Handgrenades. The CD is divided into three acts – charting civilisation’s collapse, death and re-birth, hemmed in by emotional bookends Song of the Century and See The Light. It has to be said that this is, at its core, corporate punk rock on high; but nobody rocks corporate punk like Green Day. And it seems with 21 Guns that they’ve finally crystallized the ultimate  heartstopping anthem. It’s just a shame that Neil Young had already written the melody! Oops.

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