Once more back to basics, dear friends. Green Day may have strayed a little from the path to Welcome To Paradise over the past three decades – into punk opera, grandiose rock balladry or, as on 2020’s last album Father Of All Motherfuckers, garage rock’n’roll – but eventually they always steer back into their melodic punk hammer lane.
Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong has described ‘Saviors’, their fourteenth album, as bridging the gap between 1994’s Dookie and 2004’s American Idiot, and there it certainly sits, part hurtling punkarama, part political rock drama. It’s a style that Green Day pioneered and epitomise, and they don’t wander too far from it.
Opener and first single held over from to avoid making that album too political, firmly stakes out the territory. ‘My Armstrong sings in his gung-ho punk bawl, pinpointing the issues of unemployment, homelessness and conspiracy acceptance, over swashbuckling stadium punk and chamber-pop interludes. But this touch of political charge doesn’t stampede across the album. and the full-throttle – power punk tracks as catchy as Green Day have ever been – reference widespread racism, gun violence and the billionaire space race (or “assholes in space”, as Armstrong puts
