Uno, dos… tré.. Well, pun is definitely intended when it comes to part three in Green Day’s album trilogy. For you who don’t know, Green Day’s drummers name is Tré Cool. It probably doesn’t say so in his passport, but that’s the name he is known by. Of course, his face decorates the album cover. The two previous albums has the faces of guitarist/singer Billy Joe Armstrong on !Uno! and bassist Mike Dirnt on !Dos!.
The music on this third offering follows the path the last two went down, although on this one, the band follows their own musical style and the more experimental stuff has been left out. Even though they made some really cool stuff with that, it is nothing you really miss here as I think that this one is the strongest of them all. It is without a doubt the most even album of the three!
What is a bit weird though, is that they open the album with a ballad, the first single “Brutal Love”, a really good one that starts with the guitar chords that sounds a lot like “Love In Vain” by The Rolling Stones. The song sounds a lot like “Bring It On Home To Me” by Sam Cooke, though. “Missing You” follows and it is a perfect Green Day pop rock song, “X-Kid” is brilliant, very catchy hard rock, “Sex, Drugs And Violence” is great, a mix of pop, punk and hard rock and “Little Boy Named Train” is a killer where the mix pop / metal with traces of punk and I hear “Public Enemy # 1” by Mötley Crüe in this one. Maybe Crüe’s album Too Fast For Love is a big influence on the band as they more or less ripped off “On With The Show” by the Crüe in parts of their song “Jesus Of Suburbia” from American Idiot. “Walk Away” is a very good groovy hard rock song, “Dirty Rotten Bastards” is a brilliant mix of pop, punk, metal and folk and I guess this is their most experimental song on this album and “The Forgotten” is just stunning, their grand ballad.
Not much more to say about this album other than if you liked the first two albums, then you will definitely like this one as well. I give all the albums my thumbs up, but I still don’t get the purpose of releasing three full albums in only one year. It takes time to fully get into an album and three at once might be a bit too much to digest. Still, the songs are good and if you’re a Green Day fan, you have your hands full, listening to this.
Jon Wilmenius (8/10)
Tracklist:
1 Brutal Love
2 Missing You
3 8th Avenue Serenade
4 Drama Queen
5 X-Kid
6 Sex, Drugs & Violence
7 Little Boy Named Train
8 Amanda
9 Walk Away
10 Dirty Rotten Bastards
11 99 Revolutions
12 The Forgotten
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