Okay, I’ll try and keep the summary quick. Green Day is an American pop punk band that that is known for penning some highly regarded pop-punk albums, such as 1994’s Dookie, amongst others. In 2004, after falling from popularity, they released American Idiot, a polarizing, and political posturing album that made its debut at the top of the Billboard charts. The album definitely spawned many copycat attempts such as Sum 41’s Underclass Hero. Many people praised the album since they thought it was extremely grandiose and theatrical piece of work. 21st Century Breakdown was the follow-up record to their 2004 success, which ended up being a bastardized rehash of its predecessor.
¡Uno! is the first part of a trio of albums that Green Day is releasing to the masses. With so much material being released in such a short time span, not to mention the fact that the band releasing it is known for their overuse of tedious chord progressions, the project seems like a recipe for disaster on paper. I personally don’t like anything Green Day has released; the older “classic” Green Day is pretty mediocre to me because there are a lot of catchier alternatives to their old albums. American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown, while they have a handful of decent tracks, are giant over-political cluster***s (especially the latter) that pretend to be concept albums in order to mask their below average song writing and lack of technical ability.
However, at least the last two albums had a grandiose feeling to them. While I didn't enjoy them, I was mildly compelled by some of the material I heard off of the massive turd known as 21st Century Breakdown. Listening to ¡Uno!, I barely remember anything from the first four tracks except some of the lyrics from “Nuclear Family”, only because I watched the egotistical music video for it (they made way too many music videos for this album). All of the songs have three-chord loud choruses. “Carpe Diem” is probably one of the most painful tracks to listen to. Hearing a harmonized Billy Joe is pretty grating to my ears. Billy Joe is not a terrible singer by any means; he’s just extremely boring and doesn't do anything really catching with his voice. The album’s closer, “Oh Love”, is an over-long song that also has one of the worst choruses on the record. In fact, it’s probably one of the worst songs on the record. I always changed the station whenever I heard it on the radio during my drives to work.
If there is anything positive I have to say about this record, it would be that “Rusty James” had a few catchy vocal lines in the verses, but there isn't much else positive that I remember about his vocals. "Kill The DJ" was a unique song compared to the rest of the record, and I appreciate the effort, but the lyrical content is so stupid I can't take it seriously.
There isn't a lot I can say about this album. While it lacks anything of the ear-raping quality, they play it way too safe. The album is written extremely lazily. After listening to ¡Uno!, I realize how plausible for them to have three albums worth of this ***ty pop-punk/alt-rock drivel. I don’t expect much from the other releases, considering this band has never impressed me. But hey, maybe they’ll pull something out of the hat and surprise me.
FINAL RATING: 30% (Failure)
