that first song did not sound good to me on first listen. tracks four and five were alright though. bouncing off the walls is fun.
To everyone that's listened to it so far, how does it feel as a cohesive album? Like, end to end, is it consistent or does it have glaring weak spots?
Honestly, for me, it's kind of like Uno (bear with me here), or maybe even 21CB. It all kind of works, but it doesn't have the thematic consistency of American Idiot or the flow of tone that you get from Dookie/Insomniac. I wouldn't say there are glaring weak spots though. It's like an improved version of Uno in the sense that the guitars are beefed up and it gels slightly more than Uno did. However, there are moments when you feel like they put a few songs on there simply because they were good tunes that maybe didn't cater to the album's direction as a whole. Honestly, Bang Bang feels more out of place than a lot of the songs on there but, again, I don't know that it's "glaring".
I don't expect anything to ever match the consistency of American Idiot because it'd be unfair of me to expect any of their other albums to stack up to my favorite of all time. But that sounds good and I'm very hyped for it.
This is definitely more alternative/rock Green Day than punk rock Green Day though. So, be prepared for that. Out of the songs you've likely heard so far, I think Revolution Radio + Still Breathing are the best representatives of the album.
It's almost like they took what they believed worked best in the trilogy and condensed those approaches into an album while turning up the guitar distortion again.
I'll probably regret saying this in a few years because Nimrod is my favorite Green Day album, but this is for a lack of a better analogy: If Dookie = American Idiot, then Nimrod = Revolution Radio (wishing there was 18 tracks) But let me make it clear, nothing will touch my precious Nimrod. I'm just illustrating a point on how I see the evolution of sound with this band.
I feel that this album is a beefed up, slightly better version of what they did on the trilogy. There are some decent songs here, some duds, and overall it's far from their best material. This album is decent, but I definitely think their strongest songwriting is behind them.
I remember thinking the same thing after Warning. You're likely right, but they had such a massive resurgence back then that I'm afraid to doubt them, even though realistically they shouldn't be able to pull off another peak.
It's a better version of Wild One, and I'm not sure that it's a compliment. I can still dig Outlaws either way. But I get what you mean.
I wasn't a fan until AI came out so I didn't have an opinion at the time, but looking back I still think every album through AI has extremely good songwriting. I doubt I'll feel the same way about this album years from now.
Yeah, the Wild One comparison is apt, but I thought that song sucked so I also don't think it's saying much haha.
Yea. Your timeline makes it tough for me then. I'll just say that Warning felt watered down when it released. Personally, I felt the songwriting wasn't quite up to par, but when you go back and listen to it, it has held up better than I would have expected, in retrospect.
Maybe a similar thing will happen then, but I'm not sure I expect that to happen with this album, and especially not with the trilogy.
This is the album I expected it to be. I like it and could see it being in rotation for a bit. Wish I had tickets for tomorrow!
I'll add that, with Warning, Minority was the lead single. The rest of the album didn't quite have the same energy, so I came into it after months of Minority hyping me up. I just wasn't prepared.