Green Day - Father of All... ALBUM REVIEW

[Intro: Anthony Fantano & Cal Chuchesta]
Uggggh... aah, hi everyone, Anthony Fantano here, internet's busiest music nerd. And it's time for a review of the new Green Day album, Father of All....

That's all the title? I see another word there, though, is that uh, mo... mothe...

It says "Brotherfrienders."

Ohhhhh, okay.

People who make friends with... brothers.

Ohhhhh.

That's what it says.

[Review: Anthony Fantano]
World-famous pop-punk band Green Day, they are back with a new record, Father of All.... What the hell is this? What the hell is this? I knew from the singles this wasn't going to be good, but Jesus Christ.

Uuuuuugh... I feel like a newscaster who's just been like, passed a report that the world is going to end in, like, an hour or so, and I'm just, like, sitting here shuffling the papers around, just figuring out how I'm going to say this.

But I think to kick this review off, we will let the band's words, in terms of marketing, speak for themselves. What is Father of All...? Welp, according to this billboard, it is, "no features, no Swedish songwriters, no trap beats, 100%, pure, uncut rock!"

Needless to say, I went into this record praying the big boomer energy radiating off of this billboard, also the ugly, ugly cover art, were both just ironic. And if it is, let me say, this record is maybe one of the most successful attempts at purposefully throwing a big fat turd into the collective lap of your audience. I can't believe this thing is only 26 minutes long! Only 26 minutes and yet, it feels like it's 56.

The infectious punk rock and alt-rock of Green Day's early years is pretty much gone on this record, and so are the big-budget pop-punk concepts that helped popularize them even further throughout the 2000s, on projects like American Idiot. Really since ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, ¡Tré!, the band has been in serious need of some direction, but I did not want that direction to be off of a cliff.

What happens on Father of All... is a miserable and failed attempt at revitalizing some of rock's stalest, dumbest, and shallowest cliches. Grabbing ideas from alt-rock, from glam rock, rock 'n roll, garage, and then watering them down until they're a soulless shell of their former selves, while simultaneously packaging them as rebellious and edgy. When, in reality, what we're getting here are riffs, and guitar lines, that are just begging, BEGGING to be blasted, over a shitty PA system, at a Minor League Baseball game, while boomers, with bloated bellies, and Oakleys, and sunburns, wave their Bud Lights in the fuckin' air!

That is basically the image brought to mind by tracks like the closer, "Graffitia"; with the cheesy organ, with the hand claps and the beat, to instruct the audience what to do. Really get 'em to rock out! The track sounds like a horrendous ripoff of Billy Idol's Mony Mony. I said yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

And if that wasn't bad enough, the band goes in this direction again with the track "Oh Yeah", which is aided by a vocal sample of a Joan Jett song, "Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)", which is a Gary Glitter cover; why as a band you would want to do anything connected to Gary Glitter in 2020, I don't know. I guess even if proceeds are going to a good cause, it's still not the best look, and on top of it, the song isn't even good. It just makes one of rock's most enjoyably campy eras sound excruciatingly tacky.

And, it's not as if Green Day, one of the most instantly recognizable bands, came up with their own spin on this sound; a good deal of this record, in my opinion, sounds just anonymous. Had I not been told this was a Green Day record, I would've just assumed it was some random, unsuccessful, just identity-deficient group that would never, ever, ever, ever make it, because all they're doing is forcing sounds that have mostly been dead for the past 10-30 years.

Whether that be the track "Meet Me On the Roof", which kicks off sounding like a really crappy car commercial, with its uppity guitar riffs and falsetto background vocals - Ah-woo hoo! Then it somehow finishes as a hip-swinging rocker with a doo-wop vocal flair.

Then with "I Was a Teenage Teenager", we basically have a ripoff of what sounds like Make Believe-era Weezer; why this is the era out of all of the Weezer eras you would want to copy, I don't know, this is one of the worst of them.

Meanwhile, with "Junkies On a High", it feels like Green Day essentially loses track of their own back catalog, making a song that sounds like if you had to recreate "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", but you hadn't heard it since the year it dropped, and you can't fully recall the chorus.

Again, it's kind of disturbing to know this is a Green Day album, and yet there's so little of it that is recognizably Green Day. Like, why is it when I put this album on, the title track plays, and it sounds like Jack White and Josh Homme collaborating on the worst 2000s-era garage rock revival song imaginable? And why does "Fire, Ready, Aim" sound like the band taking another whack at it, because the first track didn't suck enough?

The cock-rock riffs, the "wee-oo-oo-ooo" vocals, the, just, insipid, little organ leads. This is everything that made Jet, The Mooney Suzuki, and The Vines bad. This is the reason we stopped listening to these groups. This is everything Green Day wasn't doing during that same era of time, and now, less than 20 years down the road, they're doing it, they're literally just doing it.

What Green Day has achieved here is like a rock 'n roll Rorschach test. All of it is presented in this blobby, mess of a way, and all you can really do is stare at it and just try to make something out of it. It's like Green Day is trying to put the final nail in the genre's coffin, and, just, roll the casket off into an active volcano. If that's by accident, wow, uh... this record is a massive failure, and, um... better luck next time? If that's on purpose, for some reason, I - I mean... okay? I guess... Uh, I still don't wanna listen to it, ever again.

(sigh) I- I really did struggle listening to this, um... repeated times, trying to find... some redeeming value in it, but I just can't. This, this was horrendous, this is everything that I just don't want a rock album to be. Feeling a strong 0 to a light 1 on this one, tran -

[Outro: Anthony Fantano]
- sition, have you given this album a listen? Did you love it? Did you hate it? What would you rate it? You're the best, you're the best, what should I review next? Hit the like if you like, please subscribe and please don't cry. Hit the bell as well. Over here next to my head is another video for you to check out; hit that up or the link to subscribe to the channel. Anthony Fantano, Green Day, forever!