Review Summary: An incredibly dull, bland, and uninteresting album with very few stand out tracks among the incredibly average songs.
Cast your mind back to when Green Day announced that, rather then release one new album, they would be releasing a three album trilogy, with each album being released a mere few months apart from each other, what was your reaction?
Well, I'll tell you mine, it was something along the lines of 'What the ***?! This is going to suck so bad, there is no way they are going to pull it off. Billie Joe seems to have vanished up his own ass' etc. I had very little hope for these albums. Not even The Beatles were able to fill up two albums with enough worthy material. Heck, even Bono hasn't been ambitious enough to release even a double album, so what made Green Day think they'll be able to pull this off? *** knows, but I was expecting a very bland album full of filler with about 3 or 4 stand out tracks, especially after the mediocre singles 'Oh Love' and 'Kill The DJ' (more on them later). Unfortunately, I have to say my expectations were met.
Uno, part one of this trilogy, is terrible. Almost all the songs are incredibly boring and forgettable, and there is nothing to make me go back and listen to the album again. It seems that Green Day are past their time and have lost their relevance, and they are doing this trilogy thing in an attempt to stay relevant, but it just backfires right in their faces, yet their fans still go ahead and buy it.
There are only really three songs that stand out. Two of these, 'Nuclear Family' and 'Let Yourself Go' are pretty good songs that remind us of Green Day's earlier, punkier material, which I find was vastly superior to the later material. 'Nuclear Family' would fit pretty well onto the bands 'Nimrod' album. 'Kill The DJ', on the other hand, only stands out because it is so terrible. It starts off sounding like a bad 'Red Hot Chili Peppers' rip off, and then goes into a horrible chorus of 'Someone Kill The DJ, Shoot The ***ing DJ'. In fact, the only way this song would be worse if it was Nickelback's Chad Kroeger singing it rather then Billie Joe Armstrong.
Asides from those three songs, there isn't really anything that jumps out at you. 'Carpe Deim' sounds like a filler song from 21st Century Breakdown (and there was a lot of filler on that album), and 'Oh Love' was a stupid choice for a first single, yet alone as the closing song to finish the whole album.
Basically, this album is of a rather poor quality, which is painful, since Green Day used to be such a great band. If their recent infamous performance at the iHeartRadio festival is anything to go by, it seems that Green Day are losing their relevance. I honestly think that they should just call it a day. I mean, everyone has to call it a day someday, and I'd rather they did it soon before they add even more turds to their once great legacy.
